What does it mean to rebuild yourself from the ground up? For Kim Petras, pop’s favorite provocateur, the answer lies somewhere between music and architecture.
After breaking her ankle last year and finding herself forced into stillness for the first time in a decade, Petras began looking inward, asking herself, “Why do you do this? Where do you want to take it? What do you want to stand for?” Out of that pause came a revelation: she’s done letting anyone else steer her vision.
The pop star’s forthcoming era finds her dismantling the old scaffolding—major-label expectations, outside opinions, industry politics—and constructing something new from the rubble. That creative rebuilding also marks a new level of authorship for the pop powerhouse, who co-produced the record herself alongside a community of trans artists like Angel from Frost Children and Margo XS.
Following this summer’s releases of “Polo” and “Freak It,” she returns with “I Like Ur Look,” an audacious, self-assured introduction to her next chapter. Playful, seductive, and packed with Kim’s signature energy, the track channels the thrill of attraction into a shimmering anthem, blending early 2000s pop-punk with an EDM-fueled chorus. The song is co-produced by Kim Petras, Nightfeelings, Margo Wildman, Frost Children, and written by Petras, Margo XS, Madison Love, Angel Prost, Lulu Prost, and Nick Weiss.
For the music video, premiering later this week, she styled herself in a self-built fashion archive of 2000s Louis Vuitton. “It finally feels like I get to wear what I want to wear,” she says of the upcoming visual, which she promises includes “a really amazing fake boyfriend.”
Below, we hopped on a call with Kim to talk about her upcoming era, her new single and music video, and what fans can expect from the album ahead.
V: How would you describe this new era and the world you’re building with the upcoming album?
Kim Petras: It’s an interesting one! I broke my ankle last year, and that kind of stopped my whole world. I couldn’t perform, and I had to get surgery, which made me really introspective. Usually, I’m always on the go—and I’ve been on the go for like ten years. I missed going out, wearing heels, feeling like myself, and performing so much. But that downtime also made me adventurous—looking into myself and asking, Why do you do this? Where do you want to take it? What do you want to stand for?
And what I realized is that I want to stand for creative freedom. I want to be someone who pushes music forward and doesn’t necessarily go by, “This is what my label wants,” or “This is what radio sounds like.” I want to move with the current zeitgeist of music and find the thing that differentiates me. When I first came out, I was making really nostalgic ’80s pop, at a time when that wasn’t what anyone else was doing. And it felt awesome to carve out my own little strange pocket of music that the mainstream wasn’t fucking with at the moment, but it’s what I wanted to do.
This album has that same energy. It’s inspired by my friends, by that need to go out again and connect with the people I think are the future of music. Working with trans girls on this record—Angel from Frost Children and Margo XS—made me feel so understood and free. I don’t care about anything but the art of this.
That’s what unlocked this really poppy, weird, abrasive new world that matches my fashion, which has always been really important to me. It’s also a bit of a nod to the 2000s and the sounds I grew up listening to.
V: Let’s dive into “I Like Your Look.” Talk to me about the song.
KP: “I Like Your Look” really just started because everyone around me was constantly looking fab—Angel and Lulu from Frost Children, Margo’s personal style. We’d meet up at my house; I built a studio there and picked out all the furniture myself. That process made me realize I had no idea what my style was when it came to furniture or home stuff. My dad’s an architect, so that kind of made me feel embarrassed.
So I told myself, Okay, I have a broken ankle—I’m going to pull myself together and make this space mine. My stylist would come over every day and just be like, “Oh, obsessed with your look!” I think we all needed to dress up to feel creative, which is what connects us in a really cool way.
At one point, we were like, You know what? That’s actually one of the best things you can hear from your friend. Getting a compliment on your outfit is honestly one of the best feelings in the world. So immediately we thought, Let’s write about that feeling. It’s also kind of a strange song, because it’s about dressing up for someone who has no interest in you, but you try to win them over with your fashion and how good you look. The hook sounds really happy, but underneath it’s actually about wishing you could have someone you just can’t.
V: This project marks the first time you’re co-producing your music. What inspired you to take that creative control, and how has that shift changed your process in the studio?
KP: I come into sessions pretty often with fully fleshed-out ideas, melodies, chords, everything. In the past, because I came up as a songwriter, people didn’t really bring up that I should probably be credited as a co-producer. I just assumed that if I wasn’t sitting at the main computer, and I was just playing my little chords in the corner, that somehow didn’t “count” as producing. But this time around, I finally had people kind enough to say, “No, you are a co-producer. This is how it goes for everyone else.” I’ve learned a lot. I comped a lot of my own vocals on this record, which was new for me.
I’d been craving that challenge. I was doing so many sessions where it felt like I was just writing the same boring pop songs over and over because people kept saying, “Well, this is what works.” After a while, that just makes you feel like shit.
So I decided to stop listening to everyone else. I dropped my management, got rid of the corporate world, and everyone who’s always had a say in what I wear or what I release. And I found people who support my vision 100%, and luckily, I’ve gained friends who feel like family.
Now I feel so much more connected to what’s actually happening in the clubs. That’s always been my goal: to make gay club music. So now I feel like it’s the kind of clubs that I currently want to go to that would play this music. It feels fucking amazing.
V: What are the musical inspirations for the album? Are there any artists or songs in particular you’ve been listening to get in the mood?
KP: My own music catalog inspired me more than anything else—some of my favorite moments from my career: ’80s pop singles, Turn Off the Light, and Slut Pop. I thought, What if we could build a sonic world that combines all these characters I’ve created over the years and fuses them into one? We were hyper-focused on not pulling too much from outside influences, except for maybe Avicii and early 2000s EDM. EDM was huge on our list.
I was also really inspired by Frost Children’s album Sister—it’s one of my favorite albums ever—and by Margo. Porches is another writer I’ve loved for a long time, and he actually has a few songs on this record that I think people won’t expect.
It’s not just a straight-up club album; it has really deep moments for me. Moments that felt scary to write about. I’ve always preferred to wrap myself in a character rather than air out my diary. The worst thing is when I go into a session and someone asks, “What’s happening in your life? How are you feeling?” I don’t want to talk about real shit—I want to come up with some fantastical and weird concept. It irritates me when people say the most creative thing you can do is just tell the truth. Creating something that’s not real is creative too.
There’s this song [in the upcoming album] that’s about my dad. When I was a kid, every weekend we would go to my meetings to get hormone therapy. I was like 10, 11, 12, and we’d go to meetings with psychologists all across Germany. We would take these road trips to find someone who would treat a kid who’s transgender and get me on therapy. And every trip—he’s an architect—so he would make an effort to show me all kinds of architecture on those trips. There was this one building that got torn down, and they built a really ugly one instead. I just felt like it wasn’t this magical, brutalist, sick building that was there before. Now it’s like a modern apartment building with a pool or something, and I don’t like it.
My dad would always complain that they tore down something beautiful. And a lot of the time, I think about how people criticize being an openly trans artist—when you talk about it, people say, “You’re ruining your beautiful body that God gave you.”
So I compared it to that building—something that used to be there, that was beautiful, and then they tore it down and ruined it. It’s a standout song for me.
V: What can fans expect from the music video? What inspired the looks, and what kind of vintage influences did you pull from?
KP: I put together all the looks in this video and styled myself for the first time. It’s a lot of 2006 to 2011 Louis Vuitton, which is just this romantic thing to me that I’ve always been obsessed with. It finally feels like I get to wear what I want to wear.
The video’s about me talking to a guy who’s telling me what he likes and doesn’t like. I adjust myself to everything he says. In the video, I don’t really have a personality—I’m willing to change for whatever other people like. That’s something I relate to. In my dating life, it’s been hard not to change myself into what I think other people want. That’s the storyline: he says, “I hate bananas,” and I spit out a banana; then he says, “I love Australia,” so I make a dress with an Australian flag to impress him.
Unfortunately, it never works to change your personality to what you think someone else will like. The looks and fashion in the video really emphasize that message—the need to put on all this stuff and become all these things you’re not, just to appear effortless and lovable. I’m really excited for people to see it. It feels like something I’ve always wanted to do. Plus, I got a really amazing fake boyfriend in the video, so I can’t wait for everyone to see it.
V: You worked with mostly trans artists and collaborators on this upcoming project — can you talk about what that creative environment was like and what it means to you?
KP: I really want to put my fans onto the Frost Children and Margo XS—and Margo XS’s project deBasement, which is amazing. It’s a banger. Our brains merged on this project, and it wouldn’t be the same without them. I loved working with Sophie; she was one of the few trans girls of that moment who was like, “I love you and I want to work with you. I think what you’re doing is amazing.” I always wanted a sisterhood or a girl group of trans girls. I’m just so happy that I found this sisterhood with them, and that we get to talk with each other about how we see pop, and how exciting it is that we exist at the same time and do our shit.
The goal is to make music that emotionally makes me feel something. And “I Like Ur Look” is really one of my favorite songs that I’ve done in a long time. It reminds me not to compare myself to greatness.
V: When you think about this new era, what emotions or ideas are at its core? What do you want listeners to feel when they hear this music?
KP: I want you to make erratic decisions and turn your life around. For me, this was like—I wish I could reinvent myself completely, get in a car, drive to the desert, I don’t fucking know—start a new life and throw away everything that ever defined me. Just get rid of all that old shit that doesn’t matter anymore. Be in the now, trust myself, and look fab.
All of this music is a sharp turn in attitude. I’m not writing for people to like me anymore. I’m writing what makes me get up, what makes me feel like, this is exactly what I want to hear. It makes me feel like I can be anything, and get rid of the chains of the past, and just start over.
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