Interview by Mikail Haroon
It’s clear that contemporary music runs on references. Particularly intense in the underground, the job of a rising artist is curating the world around their work as much as it is the work itself. And in today’s electropop scene, that world often makes the same references: Crystal-Castles-bait, 2010’s-indie-sleaze-homage, MGMT-at-Wesleyan. In this sort of environment, complete originality is all but impossible. What is possible, and still all too rare, is to synthesize from a unique combination of references a world that feels genuinely new.
Ms* Gloom, a rising siren in underground electropop, is one of those few artists building a world of their own. Her sound is atmospheric and darkwave-esque, layering her incredible vocals over production that draws from both techno and synth-pop traditions. Her aesthetic is founded on a red and black color palette, and infuses references to Art Deco design and film noir’s darkly unsettling tone. Taken as a whole, Gloom’s aesthetic world feels untethered from a tangible place or time, like something you would encounter at a neo-futuristic club in Batman Beyond.
People are falling in love with Gloom’s world. In the last couple of months, Gloom has sold out live shows in NYC and LA, and DJed at Le Bain (alongside Somewhere Special) and Colour Factory (with Pz* and The Twins). At the end of February, she released her debut mixtape J Is for Joon, a wistful, desire-driven, and energetic follow-up to her 2024 album Ballads for Da Bizness. Her sound has also gained traction in the Scandinavian underground, earning co-signs from Swedish producers and frequent Drain Gang collaborators Varg™ and Woesum.
I had the chance to attend her second-ever headline live show at my favorite small venue in NY, Nightclub 101, which has been sold out for weeks, and where she was supported by friends Pretty Sick (@sickysab) and Ren G. When she steps out, she’s dressed in her signature palette: red, black, and gold-beige, adorned with symbols that echo her cover arts, paired with medieval-style knee guards chained to her ankles. The slightly off-kilter, ornate stool completes her avant-garde stage set.
At one point, the girl next to me mentions she drove 8 hours alone just for the show. When an artist can make someone do that, it’s time to listen. So I decided to give Ms* Gloom a call. We spoke about daily life, Gossip Girl, SoundCloud deep cuts, what the future holds, and more. That conversation follows.
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Mikail Haroon: For people who don’t know who you are, who are you? What do you do?
Ms* Gloom: I actually hate saying this. I’m a musician. I have a musical project called Ms* Gloom.
MH: This new project was recorded over the past like five years or something, right? Was there more recently recorded music that was not included on the project?
MG: “Flowa Girl” was the only one that was kind of new. I felt nervous that maybe the project didn’t feel like me anymore. But those are just inner demons talking because it’s very much me. It’s tough when you’re making a lot of new things at the same time as trying to release another project.
You just sold out shows in LA and New York. Do you have plans for other live shows either in those or other cities?
I’m DJing some stuff. I don’t want to play live too many times in a row. I know people do it, but I don’t know. I also haven’t DJed in so long. It might be horrible. I don’t really remember how to use the CDJs.
Was LA the first live performance you’ve done?
It was the first headlining show that I’ve done. I played three other times. I played 2 songs at El Cid, then Creepy Tepee in 2025. Then in Barcelona the same year. But this definitely felt like my first show in a way.
I love your remix of “LV Sandals”, and I’ve been listening to your old remix of “I Don’t Wanna Know” by Mario Winans. Do you think you’ll release more remixes in the future?
Oh my god. You know that one.
I can see where your sound has progressed from that.
I kind of want to make a better version of that. It’s mixed so badly. But no, I have not one plan in sight to make another remix right now. I feel like I end up making cool remixes every time I make a radio mix. I’m always remixing a lot of the songs for longer mixes and then I ask myself if I should release those?
You posted a stripped down guitar snippet on your story the other week. Can we expect some more acoustic leaning music coming?
I feel like this is so common with artists where they release something and then they want to swing into the opposite direction. I’ve been wanting to do that for a little while now. I wouldn’t say that the next project is going to be acoustic at all, but it’s definitely something that I want to do at some point. I would want to do it under a different name just so I could have total freedom and not ask for permission on when to release things. If I’m going to do that I want to make sure it’s as raw as possible and I want to just release as I go. But I do have a lot of that kind of stuff on my computer that I’ve made.
What do you find cringe right now?
Lore. People need to stop saying that. It’s so annoying to me. There was a long time when people would overuse the word iconic and misplace it, attaching it to things that were just not. Now people are saying lore. I hung out with some new friends recently and everyone was like “Lore this, lore that.”I thought this was just some instagram shit. But no, people are saying it like in real life. Everyone’s just saying, do it for the lore. Fucking kill myself. I really don’t like it. It’s too much. You can’t contrive it or or make it up. It’s a natural thing. You can’t self-prescribe yourself as having lore. Like who are you to say you have lore?
If music didn’t exist, what would you be doing instead?
I’d probably still have my old job, which is working in a corporation. But I don’t think I’d last very long. I was really losing it there for a moment. I love fashion. I would want to do something there, but I don’t know how successful I would be. I kind of feel like I want to go back to school and study something.
What would you study if you went back to school?
That’s a good question. It’d have to be something totally unrelated to the arts for me to feel like it was worth it. Maybe programming or something where I have to really challenge myself. My friend just got into med school and she was a model and I’m like, you know you could just make money here being pretty, right?
What is the best set that you’ve ever seen?
Oh man, I have a few. I saw Aphex Twin at a festival in Houston. I think the guy who runs it got cancelled. It was in 2016 or 2017 and it was the first time he’d played in a really long time, and it was pouring rain and all my friends left except one and it was fucking crazy. Especially because the strobe lights were glitching through the rain. It was so beautiful.
In 2015 I saw M.E.S.H. in Berlin and he played Britney Spears with club music. At the time I had never seen that before. I was like whoa okay you can do that. It influenced me a lot.
I saw Kap Bambino live. It’s just like listening to it on the record, the same energy carries. And Molly Nilsson I saw an amazing show at Echoplex not that long ago actually. She’s talking to the audience as if we’re at dinner with her or something. It was so funny. And there’s no one playing her music with her. She’s just pressing play on the laptop.
Also Andy Stott in Berlin, 2018, sitting criss-cross applesauce. I have the whole set recorded in my voice memos. Lastly, She Past Away in Berlin, 2018. One of my favorite bands. I’ll never forget how normie I felt there. So many mohawks.
In a previous interview you said one of your favorite albums is Untrue by Burial, which is also one of my favorite albums. I listen to it when I study.
You do? I feel like I can’t listen to it that much anymore. It puts me in a weird state. I used to listen to really corny four to the floor techno when I was studying. Nothing got me more concentrated than that. I literally had a techno playlist called “helping me concentrate.”
What is another one of your all-time favorite albums?
I feel like I talk about this all the time, but Confessions on a Dance Floor by Madonna. I listened to it literally right when it came out, so I feel like I was in the moment with it. It’s so funny because I think one of my favorite genres ever is Italo disco. I’m such a nerd about it and I realize that she pulled a lot from that. But I only really got into Italo disco in college. So it was weird to listen to something as a kid and then as an adult kind of gather what she was influenced by. It’s so cool and very inspiring to me. That whole time it was under my nose.
Who are some other artists that you’ve been listening to that are coming up right now?
Fuck that’s a hard one because I’m not listening to many brand new artists as much as I am older stuff–but I’m excited about Jeune Morty and obviously Cece Natalie.
Looking through your SoundCloud following, I saw you’re into some hardcore-adjacent DJs I also like, like alirq, DJ g2g, and DJ Fingerblast. Do you have a favorite hardcore track or artist?
Someone who I was really into who really influenced me with using samples and stuff like that is DJ David Goblin. He’s from this Brussels label called PRR! PRR! NOUVEAU LABEL. I haven’t listened to him in a long time, but he goes so hard. All of his songs are kind of goblin themed and really hardcore. It would have been cool to see him live. He would have goblins and stuff like that. It’s really funny. I don’t know anyone else who’s made shit like him. So shout out DJ David Goblin.
You’ve talked about how well researched Gossip Girl is. There’s this moment when Rufus can’t go to this gala with Lily because he has tickets to go see the Magnetic Fields concert. I just think it’s so funny.
Wait, what season is that?
It’s four or five.
You know what’s funny is I keep asking myself when am I going to restart it? And then I put it on and start from the beginning. I need to start where I begin to forget things because I’ve seen the pilot maybe a hundred times.
Do you have a favorite random cameo or favorite fashion bit or a random cultural reference from the show?
There’s this one I think they’re at some coffee shop near NYU and Lady Gaga was performing and I’m like what the fuck is going on? Also that episode where Florence and the Machine performed at the ball. What I love is there were a few episodes that they dedicated only to one artist. Frank Ocean was one of them.
One thing that jumpscared me was when they’re at some gala and “Celesteica” by Crystal Castle starts playing.
Yes that was crazy. I had never listened to new Cindy Lauper and then they played this song called “Echo.” That show’s put me on to a lot of stuff.
You released two versions of “Something to Hold Onto,” a harder and a softer one. Which version do you personally prefer, and which one did you expect people to gravitate toward more?
I like the softer one more. It started out as the softer one. I’m really picky and a perfectionist with vocal stuff. I’ll do a lot of takes for certain songs and sit there for so long. It was one of the first times releasing a song where I didn’t redo it. It was the first take and then I ended up chopping it up and I was like, fuck I don’t want to leave that stuff behind. So then I just dropped both. I knew that people would like the harder one more. But the softer one is actually one of my favorite tracks of mine.
Where does that iconic “harder” sound that pops up throughout your songs come from?
I found it while making a lot of mixes and listening to DJ David Goblin. It came from a long, really corny YouTube compilation, about 30 minutes, of DJ/MC clips, all from one guy. That’s where I got it. I tried to find it again and I can’t fucking find it. Thank god I downloaded the whole thing. There’s a lot more from that same compilation that I’ve used that doesn’t say “harder.” There are other bits, and I’ve also used tags where me or Lucio, who I work with, will say something and pitch it down. But the “harder” one is from that.
Do you like witchhouse music?
I do. I remember the first time I heard “Trapdoor” from Salem. It was in that movie Place Beyond the Pines and they’re like walking into the house party and I was like whoa. It was fucking crazy. I don’t know many newer witchhouse artists but I do feel like I find a lot of random AI generated Russian songs like witchhouse songs. There’s this one guy called △Sco△. He has some really good songs that I’ve downloaded because I wanted to DJ them.
Where do you see this whole electroclash thing going right now? I kind of hate using that word but it’s a necessary semantic evil.
Well, it’s a real word. Where do I see it going? I think people are going to get tired of new renditions of it. I don’t know any artists now where I could see them doing that forever. I feel like they’re chasing something and not sitting with it. There’s nothing holding a candle to the OGs anyways.
I read that you’re planning to record your next project in Sweden. You’ve worked with Swedish producers like Varg and Drain Gang producers like Woesum and Young Sherman. What was that collaboration process like?
Me and Woesum were talking online for a while and he was probably the first person that really believed in me and wanted to work. I really cherish that relationship. It was at a time when I was listening to Blue Summer so much. Every day I would just play it start to finish over and over again. I would send him vocals all the time.
That’s sick. I feel like they have such a strong like ear for collaborations and pulse on what’s interesting. I love that Gud and Rx Papi record
Yes and then also there was Victory Music, that project with RealYungPhil? I listened to that a lot last year. I love that project and they collaborate so well.
I’ve randomly seen Real Yung Phil when he performed at my frat house. It was like right after Victory Music came on.
Wow. That’s so cool. I feel like colleges know what’s up. At NYU they’ve had SOPHIE play in 2015. They had a lot of great acts play. UCLA too now.
What is the best meal you’ve ever had in your life?
My sister’s persian food. She makes the best gheymeh and kashk bademjan I’ve ever had in my life! Which says a lot.
What’s a small luxury or daily ritual that you swear by?
I have a lot. I spray my face throughout the day with anything. I have these empty spray bottles and I’ll just put tap water and rose water in there. I like to spray my face all day long. Tea every night. I need to get a bigger cup though because I drink it too fast. I do a mix of dandelions and then I put peppermint in there. Now I’m like a real adult because I bring tea on my travels. I have them in my purse and stuff.
omgggg #luvumsglooom