Penny Roox Turns Heartbreak and Uncertainty Into Dreamy Alt-Pop on “who will take care of me”

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that arrives before a relationship has actually ended—the quiet realization that something once permanent is beginning to disappear, accompanied by the terrifying question of who you’ll become without it. On “who will take care of me,” Penny Roox captures that uncomfortable space with remarkable intimacy, turning the dissolution of her first long-term relationship into something far more searching than a conventional breakup song.

Released June 12, the single finds the Dutch alt-pop artist examining dependency, identity, abandonment, and the frightening freedom of starting over. Its title initially sounds like a question directed toward another person, but as the song unfolds, it takes on a deeper significance. Who will take care of me when you’re gone? Who am I without the person I became beside you? And perhaps most importantly: can I learn to take care of myself?

Roox wisely leaves those questions unresolved.

Instead, “who will take care of me” exists inside the uncertainty. A repetitive picking pattern on Spanish guitar forms the song’s foundation, circling again and again beneath Roox’s whisper-soft delivery. There’s something almost carousel-like about the construction: beautiful and enchanting, but restless, continually moving only to arrive back where it began. It perfectly mirrors the mental loops that accompany a relationship’s collapse, when the same questions can be examined a hundred different ways without producing an answer.

That repetition could easily have become monotonous in less capable hands. Here, it becomes the point.

The production retains the vulnerability of its origins. Roox wrote and recorded much of the track herself across different locations and emotional stages—during the relationship, throughout its uncertain final period, and after the breakup. Fragments captured in Durbuy, Lithuania and Rotterdam eventually came together with producer Viktor van Woudenberg, but the finished recording never feels overly sanitized. There’s still a bedroom-recording closeness to it, as though these thoughts weren’t necessarily intended for an audience.

That quality makes listening feel almost voyeuristic at times. Roox has described revisiting portions of the recording as flipping through her own diary, and “who will take care of me” genuinely carries that sense of documentation. Instead of recreating an emotion after gaining distance from it, she seems to have preserved pieces of herself while the transformation was happening.

It also makes the single an intriguing opening chapter for the larger coming-of-age story Roox is beginning to tell. Growing up is often portrayed musically through arrival—finding independence, finding confidence, finding yourself. Roox is more interested in the messier stage before any of that happens: realizing the old version of your life no longer fits while having absolutely no idea what will replace it.

Her restrained performance makes that vulnerability particularly affecting. There’s no oversized vocal climax designed to turn private heartbreak into spectacle. The power instead comes from how little Roox seems interested in protecting herself from the listener. Her voice remains close and delicate, giving the impression that we’re hearing thoughts almost at the exact moment they become words.

It’s a natural evolution for an artist who has already carved out space within the Dutch alternative scene, earning radio support from NPO Radio 1, Radio 2, 3FM and Studio Brussel alongside Spotify editorial placements and touring experience with Popronde and artists including The Waterboys, Nina June and Seasick Steve. Yet “who will take care of me” feels less concerned with demonstrating where Roox has already been than establishing where she is willing to go next.

And that appears to be somewhere considerably more exposed.

“who will take care of me” is beautifully uncomfortable alt-pop: dreamy on the surface, quietly devastating underneath. Penny Roox doesn’t offer a neatly packaged lesson about letting go. She captures the far more recognizable moment when letting go hasn’t quite happened yet—when love, dependency, grief and identity remain tangled together and the future feels simultaneously frightening and necessary.

Sometimes coming of age doesn’t begin with knowing exactly who you’re becoming. Sometimes it begins with finally admitting that you don’t know.

With “who will take care of me,” Penny Roox makes that uncertainty sound strangely beautiful.