Recorded at Bluebird Studios with producer Declan Lonergan, the track opens on a bassline that pulses like a streetlight flickering over wet tarmac — synthetic, insistent, unmistakably indebted to the analogue machinery of the 1980s but never content to merely imitate it. Lonergan's production has clearly been built with a dance floor in mind, yet it resists the flattening gloss that so often sands the danger off synth-pop. The low end growls. The mid-range stays lean and hungry. Nothing here sounds like it was smoothed out by committee.

Chelle wrote the song entirely on her own, and that authorship shows in the writing's nerve. The lyrics carry an empowering edge without tipping into slogan, which is a harder trick than it sounds — plenty of pop stars have reached for defiance and landed on cliché instead. She doesn't. Her phrasing has a clipped, almost cinematic economy, each line functioning like a scene cut rather than a diary entry. The chorus doesn't explain itself; it simply arrives, full-throated and certain, the way a good line of dialogue lands in a film noir just before the lights go down.

Vocally, she's confident enough to let tension do the work rather than volume. There's restraint in the verses — a held-back, almost whispered menace — that makes the eventual release in the chorus feel earned rather than engineered. Too many artists working in this dark-pop lane mistake bombast for intensity; Chelle understands that atmosphere is built through withholding, and she withholds beautifully before she finally lets go.

The arrangement itself deserves particular credit for its patience. Rather than front-loading every hook in the opening thirty seconds — the modern pop instinct, terrified of the skip button — "Have To Do" lets its layers accumulate. A pulsing arpeggio here, a shard of icy pad there, drums that tighten their grip incrementally rather than all at once. By the final chorus, the track has earned its full weight, and the payoff feels less like a drop than a reveal, curtain pulled back on something that was assembling itself in the shadows all along.

This single arrives on the back of real momentum — praise from BBC Introducing, strong Irish radio support, and coverage from Hot Press, extra.ie, and EARMILK — and it justifies that attention rather than simply riding on it. Where lesser artists might have played it safe on a track positioned as a potential breakout, Chelle has instead sharpened her sound: darker, more controlled, more confident in its own theatricality.

"Have To Do" is a genuine calling card — noir-tinged, synth-driven, and built with the kind of structural intelligence that suggests Chelle is thinking several releases ahead of herself. Club-ready, yes, but with enough atmosphere and lyrical bite to survive well outside the club too. This is a young artist finding her voice and, tellingly, finding it fully formed.