Alana Markel  – Not Likely

Alana Markel follows her breakout EP I Love You with the double single “Not Likely,” featuring two distinct versions of the same song: the warm, electronic original and “Not Likely 2,” a stripped-back acoustic counterpart that puts Markel’s voice and songwriting front and center. It’s also Markel’s first summer release, a fitting departure for an artist who has previously described her music as “cold weather music.”

Alana Markel is a songwriter and composer based in Brooklyn whose music moves between art-pop, electronica, and left-field pop. At the core of her work is an interest in contrast, from her intimate yet powerful voice to compositions that shift between spare and expansive, electronic and acoustic. Her songwriting is playful and optimistic without losing its underlying melancholy, resulting in music that feels both contemporary and deeply human.

“Not Likely” feels made for the end of summer: warm and giddy, but tinged with the melancholy of a season slipping away. Markel wrote and produced the track in the spring and summer of 2025, building around a flowing synth part sent to her by collaborator Sean Mackillop over iMessage. The song’s chopped drum loops, voice-like synths, and synth-like vocals mark a particularly electronic turn for Markel, while its emotional core is rooted in a period of serious artistic uncertainty.

After a peer suggested she didn’t have to write about love all the time, Markel found herself second-guessing her instincts and struggling to finish anything. One evening, walking through Chinatown while listening to Mackillop’s instrumental, she quietly recorded the first verse into her phone. Listening back later, she realized how instinctively she had revealed herself in the lyrics.

“I didn’t realize how clearly and easily I had revealed my own psyche to myself.”

The process of developing “Not Likely,” from Mackillop’s original loop through the writing and production, ultimately broke Markel out of her writer’s block and helped pave the way for I Love You, which she would go on to make that fall.

“The song is about having the bravery to honestly share your desire and life force with the world.”

In “Not Likely 2,” Mackillop’s flowing, complex synth part is translated onto an upright piano for the song’s acoustic counterpart. After revisiting and falling back in love with the electronic version, Markel realized she wanted a version in which the piano and vocal had nothing to lean on but each other. The track does just that, using only an upright piano recorded in a friend’s apartment and a vocal recorded through wired headphones on a friend’s back porch in Charleston.

“Sean’s piano part was too hard to sing and play simultaneously. One day.”

Together, the two versions reveal opposite sides of the same song: one lush and electronic, the other spare and vulnerable. The contrast is central to Markel’s work, which consistently moves between intimacy and expansiveness, playfulness and melancholy, and electronic and acoustic textures.

Since the release of I Love You, Markel has surpassed half a million streams and toured the U.S. with Mark William Lewis. She will next perform at Knockdown Center’s Ruins on September 17, opening for Acopia and Carla dal Forno.

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