ELISE TROUW

Elise Trouw has spent most of her life counting.

As a child in rural Fallbrook, California, she could tell you exactly how many stairs were in her house – though she might skip one just to land on an even number. Before she had words for it, Elise was tracking the rhythm of the world: steps in multiples of four, chairs in symmetrical rows, piano notes practiced at 5am in precise sequence. Her parents eventually made her wait until 6am. 

This early obsession with order and balance would later lead her to the drums, where everything clicked. “Drumming was like a physical manifestation of how my brain already worked,” she says now. “Counting subdivisions, staying locked into the groove – it just made sense to me.”

It also offered something else: protection. Behind the kit, she didn’t have to be the center of attention. She could participate without exposing too much.

That changed when she began to sing.

Best known for her seamless one-woman-band videos and genre-blurring musicianship, Elise rose to fame in the late 2010s through viral live-looping mashups and meticulous multi-instrumental performances. Her debut album, Unraveling, released as a teenager, led to a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a two-week tour opening for Incubus. With no label or manager at the time, Elise was suddenly in green rooms and industry meetings where she was both admired and underestimated – navigating adult spaces while still barely out of high school.

“I didn’t realize until later how much I felt like I had to be palatable,” she reflects. “I wanted to be seen as likable. As someone who could play well and sing well and look good doing it, even if that meant not being my full self .”

Even her songwriting during that time was shaped by a desire to connect – sometimes by leaning into what she thought people wanted to hear. “I wasn’t always writing from a deeply personal place,” she says. “I was still figuring out what I was allowed to say.”

But while she was performing onstage, another project was taking shape in secret.

Her new album The Diary of Elon Lust, out February 13th, 2026 via Midtopia, is the most radical departure of her career – and also the most honest. It’s a satirical concept album told through the persona of Elon Lust: a twenty-something male alter ego who embodies a cocktail of entitlement, objectification, and weaponized likability. Part archetype, part confession, part cautionary tale, Elon is made up of things men have said to Elise. Or to her friends. Or to you.

“I started writing these songs as a joke,” she says. “But over time I realized – they weren’t completely jokes. And suddenly, they were the only songs I was writing that felt real.”

Across 14 tracks – each one a diary entry of sorts – The Diary of Elon Lust dissects modern masculinity through playful, uncomfortable, occasionally absurd vignettes that blend humor and social commentary with deeply personal truth. The songs are bolder. The lyrics are sharper. The satire is pointed – but never preachy.

The lead single “All You Need Is Lust” introduces the character with a tongue-in-cheek mantra that turns the Beatles’ famous phrase on its head. Over layered vocals and hypnotic groove, Elon invites listeners into a cult of carnal worship, where desire is king and female bodies are holy objects. The surreal music video, inspired by the Hieronymus Bosch painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights, features dancers with cherry heads, boob costumes, and a fever-dream aesthetic that leans into discomfort. “We wanted it to feel strange and unsettling—somehow sexual, but not sexualized,”

“The Perfect Girl” draws from a memory that’s stuck with Elise since middle school: the day a group of boys made a “hot or not” list ranking all the girls in class. The song is absurdly upbeat – Elon rattles off ideal features like a Frankenstein sculptor – but the subtext is darker. “It was one of the first moments I realized how girls were being seen,” she says. “It wasn’t much about who we were. It was about how we looked. That never really left me.”

Later tracks like “A Little Blood” dive into the shame women are made to feel for their bodies – except, of course, when those same bodies serve male pleasure. And on “Gentleman,” Elon paints himself as the self-proclaimed “good guy,” racking up points for being decent while still expecting thanks in return. These contradictions – harmless on the surface, corrosive underneath – are what make the character so effective. Elon is not a monster. He’s familiar. Maybe even likable. He’s “just joking.”

While Elise’s past work has always showcased technical brilliance, Elon Lust allows for something more: vulnerability, messiness, agency. The drums are still there, the grooves still tight. But this time, Elise isn’t hiding behind them. She’s stepping forward, even if it means letting go of perfection.

Social media was the launchpad for Elise’s early success. Her live-looping videos drew millions of views across Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, and helped her build a fanbase outside the traditional industry gatekeepers. But it also came with a cost. “It gave me visibility,” she says. “But it also exposed me to things no one would say to my face. There’s a specific kind of cruelty that comes from anonymity online..”

She doesn’t read comments anymore. Or if she does, only on good days.

And while The Diary of Elon Lust may sound like a sharp left turn, it doesn’t invalidate what came before. “I’m proud of Unraveling,” she says of her debut. “It was where I was at. It was real in its own way. But I was 17, and I wasn't comfortable being fully honest in my songwriting yet.”

This new project is different.

“This album might feel like a big departure, but it’s the first time I’ve felt free in my songwriting —it's my humor, my perspective on the world,” she says. “Even though these songs come from my own experiences, I hope people hear them and understand too.”