Alice Boxall Builds Anthemic Hooks Into “Believe What You Like”
The Cheltenham Songwriter’s New Single Pairs Thoughtful Lyrics with Full Band Melodic Rock
Alice Boxall released Believe What You Like on 17 July 2026, and it arrives with the two things indie pop most often has to choose between. The hooks are big enough to carry a room, and the writing underneath them is doing actual work. That combination is why the single has been sitting in our rotation since it landed.
You can listen to our full playlist which contains the artist’s music, and know more about the artist’s work by scrolling down the page.
Alice Boxall Writes Hooks That Carry Weight Rather Than Just Volume
An anthemic hook is easy to reach for and hard to justify. Most writers get there by simply adding. That means more layers, more reverb or a bigger drum sound. The chorus then arrives loud without arriving meaningful.
Believe What You Like takes the harder route. Alice Boxall writes the hook out of the lyric rather than around it. So the moment the chorus lifts, it lifts on something you have already been told. That is a structural choice rather than a production one. It separates a singalong from a shout.
The title itself tells you the register. Believe What You Like is not a plea or an apology. It is a line you deliver once you have stopped negotiating. A hook built on that position has somewhere to go.
Indie Pop, Melodic Rock And The Full Band Sound Behind The Single
Boxall works in indie pop and melodic rock, and the single leans on full band instrumentation rather than a programmed arrangement. That matters more than it sounds. A full band gives a chorus its lift through players responding to each other. That feels different from a chorus assembled in a session.
Her wider catalogue reaches across indie pop, rock pop and soft rock, always with the singer-songwriter frame underneath. Believe What You Like sits at the more direct end of that spread. It is the track you would use to introduce her. It carries both the melodic instinct and the lyrical detail in one pass.
“Launching Believe What You Like has been an incredibly personal journey, and seeing the music out there since July 17th has been immensely rewarding,” said Alice Boxall.
That personal framing is audible in the writing. The single suits playlists and radio, yet it never sounds like she wrote it to fit one.
What Came Before Believe What You Like And Who Covered It
This is not a debut arriving from nowhere. Boxall has been releasing music for several years. Her 2023 single Queen of Overthinking did the early work of establishing her voice.
That track picked up genuine independent coverage. It’s All Indie wrote it up on release, and PopHits.News revisited it three years on, which is rarer than a release-week mention. Coverage returning to a song years later usually means the song kept working.
Believe What You Like reads as the next step from that foundation rather than a reinvention. The lyrical precision is the same. The arrangement is simply more confident about being heard.
Stream Believe What You Like And Follow Alice Boxall Across Every Platform
Boxall names her own reference points, and they are accurate ones. HAIM are the closest structural match. The sisters build a chorus that feels effortless while the arrangement underneath stays busy and precise. Florence + The Machine are the second, less for the scale than for the willingness to let a vocal carry real weight without hedging it. The Japanese House is the third and the most instructive. Amber Bain’s work shows how much detail a pop song can hold before it stops being one.
The listener this suits is 18 to 35. They find music through indie pop playlists and still read blogs to catch what the algorithm misses. They want a chorus, but they want to respect the lyrics too.
The IndieMusic.News curator team: “We get a lot of anthemic indie pop, and most of it is anthemic in the production rather than the writing. This one earns the lift. The chorus works because of what the verses set up. That is the harder way to do it, and the reason it holds up on repeat.”
Believe What You Like is out now across streaming services. You can hear it on Spotify and find her wider catalogue on SoundCloud.
Keep up with Alice Boxall across platforms: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube channel and Facebook.
