Bella Litsa’s “Drasticism” Is Mysterious, Inevitable and Undoubtedly Your Next Obsession [Q&A]
Photo by Sandra Jamaleddine
We live in a time where art is more plentiful than ever. There are millions of artists yet to be discovered, which, as a lover of music, puts a lot of pressure on who I spend my time listening to. In August of 2025, an email appeared in my inbox with the subject line “Bella Litsa - i think you'll like!” and there was something about it I could not ignore. I pressed play on the “1117” visualizer, a striking image of an unfamiliar figure dancing in slow motion over a hauntingly beautiful track. It was at that moment I knew I had discovered an artist whose music would impact me for years to come. I could sit here and write about all the reasons you should listen to Bella Litsa’s debut album Drasticism, which is finally out today. But, much like my own discovery, I encourage you to let the music capture your attention on its own. I sat down with Bella on a lovely December day to unravel the secrets of Drasticism over coffee, understanding the passionate journey that went into creating this incredible debut record:
Giselle: Drasticism is almost out. How do you feel about it being an official introduction to your artistry?
Bella Litsa: I feel really grateful. I've worked on it for a long time and it sounds exactly how I dreamed of it sounding. I'm just really proud of the work everyone put into it and I really love it. The first song, “Saint Mishima” is one of my favorite songs I've written and I can't really imagine what it would be like for someone who doesn't know my music to press play on it. But, I hope that however it affects them, it creates a sense of mystery and intrigue.
I actually wrote down that word, “mystery” when listening to the album. It feels like unveiling a secret.
That's how the beginning of the album really feels. I wanted it to feel like you're opening a door to something that was always there, but maybe you just never knew. That was the goal. It's like you're looking into a snow globe or something.
How long did it take to make the album?
The recording process took around eight months, but it was super spread out. Some of the songs I've been writing for a while, before I had an idea of what I wanted to do with them. I was just writing and I always knew I wanted to make an album. The earliest song on the album is from 2019. Then a lot of them are from 2022-2024. The last song that I wrote for the album came to me in the middle of recording it.
Which one is from 2019?
So, the song I wrote in 2019 is “Darker”...
That’s my favorite.
Really? That song is hard for me to talk about because it's really emotional for me. I wrote it in a different place than I am now and what's funny is that I completely shelved it. I only played it once years and years ago, and I just didn't think I'd ever really return to it. Then, in the middle of the recording process, I started seeing a psychoanalyst. After the first meeting with him, I felt compelled to finish the song because I knew what I wanted to say. And once I did, I was like, okay, I have to put this on the album. Even if it feels uncomfortable, I have to do it for myself. And for anyone who might like it.
I can see it being a song that connects with so many people. It’s really striking. It's the one I keep going back to.
I always want to skip over it.
What was the song that you wrote during the album process?
The last two songs I wrote a month or two apart, “Saint Mishima” and “The Fall”. I feel like those tracks are such pillars. We made them huge and super lush. Once those two were there, I knew it was wrapped up. The bow was on the record. I remember sending them to the engineer, who's a good friend of mine. I was like, "Hayden, I think we got it." I can't imagine the album without those. I couldn't have anticipated writing them. It came on like a fever.
There are so many genres and eras of music blended in this album. I can share some I thought of, but what are your inspirations? Music, movies, etc.?
Totally. I want to hear yours first.
I was going to say Lost Highway or anything Lynch. Also Caroline Polachek comes to mind.
God, she's so good. I never get that comparison. Actually, I always get Weyes Blood.
Also, Kate Bush.
Oh my God, I love her. Regarding the album, there are lots of influences. I mean, Lana Del Rey's been huge. I was listening to her music as a child. Hearing her voice and sound, I felt like, if she can do it then I can too. I can't help but be inspired by her. There's definitely a connection there with movies, too. David Lynch uses a lot of Roy Orbison's music and that was my introduction to him as an artist. Some other influences are Rachmaninoff and Chopin. The chords and the harmonies of romantic era music, that's what I want my music to sound like. They just pull on your heartstring. I love Daft Punk, which is kind of a random one.
I hear Daft Punk! Did you use vocoder in some of the songs?
We did super hard autotune. Like, turned up to 100%. I think Daft Punk is also a baroque sounding group. I love their sound. I also love Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey.
Have you heard the new Charli xcx song, “House”?
No, I actually haven't listened to it yet.
I love anytime an artist mixes modern tools with a classical sound.
Years ago, when I was just theorizing about an album, I liked making electronic music. And I really liked making acoustic, drum, bass, guitar music. I wanted to do an amalgamation of both things. I think Drasticism leans a little bit more on the acoustic, but using autotune added so much.
The switch up in “My Blue Eyes” gets me every time.
I know, right? I don't know what happened there, but it happened. I like the outliers on the album. I think it helps the full picture of it all. It can't always be so sad.
Piano is omnipresent in most of the songs and you also have lyrics about piano. I adore the line, “Play the piano like you’re my composer / And pull out the strings in my heart / It won’t bother me.”
When I wrote that, it felt perfect. Especially because it's kind of deep into the album. You've heard so much piano and when you hear that line, it just connects.
What's your relationship to piano? Did you ever play it?
It was my first instrument. I remember the first time I ever touched a piano, I was probably five. I was so amazed by it. I remember hitting the keys and thinking, how do people know how to play this? So I asked my mom to take piano lessons. They got me a little keyboard and I was in lessons from about six to eighteen years old. Then I stopped when I went to college. It became very complicated for me because I had this really intense teacher and he wanted me to go to school for piano, but my heart was really in singing. I think a lot of classic instrumentalists have a very love-hate relationship with it. I definitely went through a period of hating it. Then after college, I was trying to write all of these songs on guitar but I'm not good at guitar. I realized I should try to write on a piano.
It's funny that it plays such a big role in the album, but you rejected it.
Oh, I totally rejected it. I never wanted to play it on stage.
Are you playing in any of the songs?
Yes, I'm playing in a couple of them. Once I figured out I could write better on the piano, that opened up the door and I started practicing classical pieces again. Because it was on my terms, it felt so much more enlivening. I think that has become so sacred. I played piano on “Tied Together by a Silver Thread” and “Angelica”.
It’s so cool to honor that part of yourself.
Definitely. I was lucky that two of my band members recording with me are so good at piano. I was still kind of in that rejection phase and just wanted to focus on singing. Huxley Kuhlmann and Abe Nouri, they just really have an ear for it, which I have less of. It's been fun to play these songs on the piano and sing them, which I never wanted to do. I still kind of don't like it, but it feels good. It's helped my confidence a lot. In the future maybe I'll play piano on all of it. Who knows?
How do you get into the headspace of writing such vulnerable lyrics and putting it out there?
I think I'm always a little bit there. But, I rarely write music. I write maybe four to five songs a year.
Do you write lines here and there along the way?
The moment just finds me. I am not chasing it, but it chases me. I do a lot of typing in my notes app or a recording voice memo of little melody lines. Then it becomes this big collection of fragments of a song or multiple songs. And then, if I find myself in a certain mood, I'll be able to sit down and put the puzzle together. It reveals itself. It feels like the song's always been there, but I'm pushing the dirt away from it and revealing something. Sometimes it starts with a chord. Sometimes I start with a melody that I'm not going to sing. It's so much fun.
That's a good relationship to have.
I think because I don't force myself to do it. I also don't care about writing a million songs.
The amount of time this album has taken is fascinating. I'm sure in moments you felt pressure, but it sounds like you really let it simmer.
Even longer than I want! I thought the album was going to be out already, so many times. I'm a meticulous person and I don't like to rush anything. There’s that saying that goes, “You have your whole life to make your first album. Then you have a year to make your second.”
You can reject that, though.
I don't know what's gonna happen. But, I knew that I could take my time. So, I did. I didn't want to feel stressed out about it and I'm glad because some of the songs wouldn’t exist.
Yeah, imagine if you had stopped before then.
Exactly. It was nice to have that flexibility.
You grew up dancing, right?
Yes.
That is so apparent to me, in the way that the melodies flow. They’re so free. How has dancing impacted this album?
I did grow up dancing, but not in a super serious way. I loved tap dancing. That fosse style was always kind of what I gravitated to. I stopped dancing in high school because I wanted to focus on music. There's something about dancing and how it feels in your body, everything that you're doing has to feel like it's a part of a seamless line. It's rarely disconnected from the intuition of your body. It stays very connected to the self and there's flow to it.
To me, it’s a very fluid album.
It kind of falls into the net. I never wanted something to feel jarring and I always wanted the music to feel inevitable.
One of the other words I wrote was “intuition."
Kind of like you're just falling.
Drasticism is the perfect title for this record because it evolves so much from start to finish. What was your process of putting together the tracklist?
There were definitely a lot of different iterations. I knew I wanted “Angelica” to be last or second to last. There's a version of the record with “Saint Mishima” as the final song. But I think it's a palatable introduction. At that point, you're buckled in. I thought about pairings of songs. I knew I wanted “Sailor” to come after “Darker”, because I love the transition of the swells at the beginning of “Sailor” after such a devastating song. It felt like the sun poking through after a storm. I had my friends help me. I was like, “How does this sequence sound?” It all got puzzled together and I haven’t wanted to change it, which is cool. I'm happy the puzzle pieces are all in the right place.
That also makes me think of how there's a snippet of “Passion Plug” that's in “Inside a Seashell”.
I wanted to introduce the sound of “Passion Plug” before “My Blue Eyes” comes in. And “Inside a Seashell” introduces the autotune at the end of it. I see the album having three pillars: “Saint Mishima”, “The Fall” and “Tied Together by a Silver Thread”.
The album cover is strikingly beautiful. What was the story behind shooting it?
I shot with this amazing photographer in New York, Logan White. She's just amazing, a dream to work with. Her aesthetic was aligned already with what I wanted to do. Actually, I reached out to her years ago, but I couldn't afford it at the time. It was full circle to finally be able to work with her and have the support to do that. The album cover was shot in the attic of an old convent. During this album, I honestly found Christianity in a newfound way. I was never raised in a religion, but life experience kind of led me there. So, I wanted the cover to invoke religious imagery. I was very inspired by photographs of other musicians that I've seen and paying homage to things like Lana Del Rey's Tropico. There's something really dirty about Drasticism, kind of tarnished and worn out. I wanted the album cover to juxtapose that. Despite this, there's still light that you carry. You're holding it, I think all the time. It's never far. The shoot was really fun and we didn't know it was gonna be the cover when we shot it. But it was too good, I couldn't not! We put these tiny mirrors in my hands and Logan was shooting on film, so we did not have a million tries to get it right. I had to angle my hands perfectly so they would directly flare straight into the lens of the camera. And we got it in one photo. That was the only photo where I was able to do it, because it was so precise.
I love when things are practical like that. You really have to lock in.
It's like magic.
What's the most important thing you learned from making Drasticism that you're going to take with you into the next chapter?
It’s almost more about shedding. I'm excited to shed the music. There’s a lot of looking back. The album was written from a very different perspective than I have now. Sometimes I feel stuck, which isn't a bad thing, but you're there still. So, I'm excited to give it to someone else and let other people take a turn with it. The process of recording taught me so much about what it’s like to be a woman in a studio. I worked with mostly men on the music, but they were so supportive. Before, I felt very uncomfortable using my voice and being direct. I developed more of a sense of assurance making this album. I don't need approval. If I can trust myself in that way, it’s amazing. It's always nice when everyone in the room is stoked on it, too. Honestly, for the next project, I would love to do it the same exact way. I want to go back to the studio with Hayden and I want to work with my band again. Because it was just a dream.
Who are your OnesToWatch? Who are you listening to that we should be listening to?
My guitarist kelt leray just put out a beautiful song called “blush.” Huxley Kuhlmann, who played guitar on the album, releases insanely gorgeous music. Ryder the Eagle. I love Thoom. Dan English. Chanel Beads.
Before we finish, I have to ask what your favorite David Lynch movie is.
It’s so hard. Blue Velvet, though. I love Wild at Heart. I love Twin Peaks: The Return.
I think The Return is the best thing anyone’s ever made. 18 hours of pure genius.
I love his vision. I also love the predecessors of his films, like Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman. You can really see the thread of their influence on Lynch. They're so different and unique, but probably my favorite movie of all time is Tarkovsky's Stalker.
I've never seen it, but I need to.
It's very long and in Russian. It's a patient movie. A lot of his movies require a lot from their viewers and then there's this relief at the end. The way that his pacing works, I really like how it applies to music. Can I ask something of you? Can I ask for your attention? Can I ask for your ears, your listening skills? I hope that it pays off. Something inspiring to me is watching foreign films, especially Bergman and Tarkovsky, where you have a beautiful image and then subtitles. The way it's translated, it’s like you're reading poetry. It's so moving to be able to read it while the images move. Lyrically, I'm inspired by subtitles.
That's so interesting. I love listening to an album for the first time, especially from one of my favorite artists, with the lyrics in front of me.
Because what people choose to say is not by accident.
Listen to Drasticism below:
February 20, 2026
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