The question underscores has been circling around for a couple of years now is whether April Harper Grey’s particular brand of internet-fluent pop would translate when stripped of its scrappy bedroom charm. On U, her third album and most ambitious project yet, the 25-year-old Filipina American answers that question with a resounding yes, even as she complicates it almost immediately.

Where 2023’s Wallsocket wore its lo-fi production like a badge, U arrives polished, big-budget in ambition if not necessarily in budget. The album opener “Tell Me (U Want It)” lays down the thesis statement in about four minutes: brostep drops, a 12/8 groove that feels both ancient and aggressively contemporary, a bridge that lands somewhere between stadium pop and club music. Grey has clearly been studying how big pop songs are constructed, and she has done her homework.

What makes U interesting rather than just impressive is that she has not abandoned what made her compelling in the first place. There is still a restlessness to her arrangements, a willingness to let a song veer off course before snapping back. “Punchline” sounds like it is headed toward a pop anthem and then dissolves into something stranger and quieter. “Vitamin” stacks hooks on hooks in a way that starts to feel almost satirical before you realize you are just genuinely enjoying it.

Grey’s voice has grown too. She was always a charismatic vocalist, but on U she is reaching for emotional registers she had not previously tried to access. There is real vulnerability on “Like a Band-Aid,” real glee on “Tell Me (U Want It).” She is not coasting on her underground credibility. She is genuinely trying to win.

Whether you find that exciting or slightly alarming probably depends on how attached you were to the scrappier underscores. For anyone who came to her recently or who simply likes pop music made with intelligence and a point of view, U is one of the better records of the year so far. It takes the monogenre thesis that pop critics have been arguing about for a decade and makes it feel thrilling rather than inevitable.

Not everything lands. The middle of the album sags slightly, a stretch of songs that are well-made without being particularly memorable. The ambition is clearest at the beginning and end. But when the record works, it really works. April Harper Grey is swinging for the fences, and she is connecting more often than not.