Charli XCX wants to make "ultimate pop music".

The 29-year-old singer has been working on the follow-up to May 2020's 'how I'm feeling now' and is having a lot of "fun" in the recording studio, though she warned fans her material will be very different to the songs on her last album.

She told Refinery29: “I’m just very into making ultimate pop music, and the whole album is very contrasting from ‘how I’m feeling now’. I’m exploring what it means to be a pop star on a major label in a not very current way. And that’s really fun to me."

And Charli revealed sex features heavily in her songs.

She added: "There are a couple of songs that have stayed as a part of this new project. And to be honest, the meaning of them hasn’t changed. I mean, they were all kind of about sex. And that’s still been quite constant for me throughout the pandemic.

“With the way that I feel about myself and my sexuality and romance, the pandemic hasn’t changed that too much. For me, it just didn’t feel like what I needed to say at that moment in time, it actually feels more, now.

"The idea of leaving my house, going back out into the world, wearing provocative clothes, dancing all night, that kind of equates more to the music that I was making before the pandemic.”

Charli confirmed she will be “releasing something before the end of the year, definitely sooner”, though it was unclear if she meant a full album, her upcoming single 'Good Ones', or another single after that.