FLO's 'Therapy at the Club' Marks a New Era of Creative Control and Genre Blending

It's kind of been like a bit of a crash course in making music," says Stella Quaresma of making FLO's second album, Therapy at the Club. After entering the music industry as teenagers, the British girl band say they grew to trust their own instincts during six months making their new record. Formed of Quaresma, Jorja Douglas and Renée Downer, they first broke through in 2022 with the track Cardboard Box and have since won Best R&B/Soul Act at the 2026 MOBO Awards. The group have more than five million monthly Spotify listeners, 1.2 million TikTok followers and almost 58 million likes on the platform. The campaign around their second album has included a NPR Tiny Desk performance viewed over a million times and appearances on high-profile US podcasts, helping reintroduce them stateside. "It felt like we went to university and graduated with honours," Quaresma adds. For their latest album, the group say they became more involved than ever before in every stage of the album's creation, from songwriting and vocal arrangements to production decisions. "Sometimes you walk away from a session and people are surprised that you contributed, that you had ideas," says Douglas. Quaresma suggests that's partly because when FLO first entered the industry, they leaned on the experience of the writers and producers around them. "In the past we'd kind of been okay with that," she says. "But now we really don't need that kind of crutch." For Downer, that greater creative control has resulted in FLO's most authentic record yet. "We're definitely a lot more grown up. We've been a lot more involved, so this really is the best reflection of us at this point in time," she says. Love has always been central to FLO's music, but on this album they explore its messier realities, with nights out providing the backdrop for stories of heartbreak, healing and friendship. "So go ahead and kiss who you wanna / whatever the trauma / If you ever fall out of love / try therapy at the club," they sing on the title track. Quaresma says the title came to represent the role friends can play during difficult moments. "It's the idea that you're having the worst time of your life, but your friends are saying, 'No, you're coming out, you're going to dance and forget about it for a second.'" While R&B remains at the heart of FLO's sound, they say they also aimed to push further into pop on their second album. Quaresma says making Therapy at the Club taught her "how fun it is to really blend genres and to delve more into making pop music to make really big songs". One example is Remedied, co-written with Grammy-winning songwriter Amy Allen, who has worked with pop stars Sabrina Carpenter and Tate McRae. When making their Grammy-nominated debut album, Access All Areas, the FLO trio wrote songs together - but for Therapy at the Club, they wrote separately before bringing ideas back to one another. Quaresma says this process helped them appreciate one another's strengths in a new way. "You don't fully get to appreciate each other's talents when you're writing in a room of 10 people. To go away and write songs, then show each other what we'd made, was really special," she says. That approach also extended to the album's collaborations. One of just two guest appearances on the record is Sex in Peace, their second collaboration with rising British R&B singer kwn. Quaresma wrote the song before bringing it to the rest of the group. Downer says working with kwn has become a natural fit. "We work really well with kwn when it comes to sexy R&B, so it felt right to send it to her and see if she'd do a verse," she says. "She sent it back really quickly. We had no notes. We loved it."