PHOTOGRAPHED BY GEORDY PEARSON.What beauty is to me
"A sense of awe, like when you see something or someone, and you completely lose yourself and go into this state of wonder, like you can’t even think anymore. Like going into the sublime or a spellbinding state. But, beauty can also be really grotesque. Either way, there’s a sense of loss or abandonment that happens in the sheer power of something beautiful."
The craziest thing I ever did
"I shot a music video for our first single last year, and I pole-danced in a waterfall. It was totally illegal to shoot there, not to mention put up a pole. I had 20 minutes before sunrise to perform all of these elaborate tricks. Luckily, I did study pole-dancing as exercise for two years, so I knew what I was doing, but it’s incredibly hard to pole-dance if the pole is vaguely slippery. I don’t know how I did it, but I pulled it off — it was very surreal."
What I wear to feel sexy onstage
"I love red lipstick and lots of heavy black eyeliner, and I like to make my hair really big and messy. When I’m performing, I often use my hair as a prop. I feel like the visual aesthetic of my band is matched to the sonic: My dark lips and heavy eyeliner really match the sensuality of the sound."
How I take risks with my music
"My music really embraces female sensuality as natural self-expression. Sometimes there’s this sense that if you’re going to be a woman in music, you have to be tough and masculine or over-sexualized. But, there is this gray zone of being true to yourself as a woman who is powerful and sexual and who doesn’t need to use that to sell herself but uses it as part of her creativity."
