King Princess, born Mikaela Straus, is a singer-songwriter discovered by Mark Ronson and also the first to be signed to his label. Support from Ronson, a heavy-weight in the industry working with names like Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga, is a sure sign for success. With all of that said, however, Straus had been destined for stardom way before Ronson got to her. In fact, the artist was offered her first record deal at the tender age of 11; a deal she eventually declined alongside her parents. Seemingly manifested from thin air and onto the pop music landscape, King Princess’s ascension to fame and notoriety has proven anything but slow and steady.

Featured on the forthcoming cover of our Discovery Issue, V117 on newsstands January 10th, Straus stands in as a spokesperson for the representation of queer identities in mainstream spaces like pop music. Below, all you need to know about King Princess.

Her First Album is Due Soon

To date, King Princess has just an EP and three singles to her name. That said, her modest body of works has brought her to great heights in a matter of months. With her first album set to drop around early Summer time, Straus’s come up is imminent and well upon us. With patience, we keep ‘Make My Bed’ on repeat and cross our fingers for an early release.

She Grew Up in the Studio

Straus’s father is a sound engineer and owns a recording studio in Brooklyn, Mission Sound. In an interview with Rollingstone, Straus says “I was this ballsy little kid who could handle herself, and my dad would be like, ‘I’ve got 500 background vocals and they sound like shit. Mikaela, can you come sing something?’” she says. “And I’d waddle in in my pajamas and sing or just be part of the vocals. The studio was just a fucking wonderland.”

Harry Styles Slid Into Her DMs

Harry asked King Princess to open MSG on his last tour, but she politely declined. pic.twitter.com/SfHzmnrWCc (via taIkfasth)

— Harry Styles Updates. (@TheHSUpdate) November 2, 2018

A video was released in November revealing the singer recount an exchange she shared with Harry Styles on Instagram–in which Styles asked King Princess to open for him at his sold out Madison Square Garden show, to which she unfortunately declined, claiming the venue surpassed her experience. A modest move by Mikaela. This did not mark Styles’s first form of outreach to the emerging artist. He initially adopted a less direct approach, tweeting lyrics from King Princess’s 1950s without a tag or anything back in March. That said, the Twittersphere took to frenzy faster than you could even say ‘1950’.

She Has a Queer Agenda

In case her binary-dispelling stage moniker doesn’t say enough, it’s true that King Princess is on a mission to advance the queer agenda. Trading her microphone for a megaphone, Straus uses the stage as a platform for not only sonic accounts of teenage heartbreak, but also for representation of queer women in mainstream discourses. Her work has obvious references to lesbian relationships, including a visual of Straus straddling a sex doll in her music video for “Talia”.