New music video from Elise Trouw

San Diego native Elise Trouw has spent the past decade crafting smart, virtuosic and emotionally adventurous music. A singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist, she’s built her career on collapsing musical boundaries, bringing together the rhythm of jazz, the hooks of pop and the intensity of alternative rock into a sound that’s entirely her own. From playing the drums, looping instruments in real time, or crafting songs that blend satire with sincerity, Elise has walked a path that prizes both talent and expression.

Her story reads like a modern blueprint for the self-made artist; in the late 2010s, she emerged from her home studio with a series of live-looping videos that took the internet by storm, each one a hypnotic display of musicianship that saw her moving between drums, bass, keys and vocals. Her mashup of Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” and Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love” became a viral sensation, earning millions of views and a spot on Jimmy Kimmel Live! practically overnight.

Her 2017 debut album, Unraveling, introduced listeners to her multi-genre world, a space where pop appeal met jazz fluidity and alternative bite. The record’s success led to her first sold-out headlining tour and a two-week arena run opening for Incubus on their 20 Years of Make Yourself anniversary tour. Over the years, her creative range has expanded through collaborations with Seal, Todd Rundgren and Travis Barker as well as performances alongside Emmylou Harris and Noah Kahan.

Now, Elise Trouw delivers her most provocative project yet with her new full-length record titled The Diary of Elon Lust. Out now on vinyl through the Buy Before You Stream initiative, with a digital release arriving February 13 via Midtopia, the album represents a sharp left turn, not away from her musicianship, but toward something riskier, more personal and darkly funny. Its latest single, “A Little Blood,” dives straight into one of the record’s most unsettling themes, the way women are taught to feel shame about their bodies, except, of course, when those bodies serve male pleasure.

Told through the lens of her fictional alter ego Elon Lust, a twenty-something man stitched together from things said to Elise, or to her friends, or maybe to you, the song turns discomfort into confrontation. It’s playful on the surface, corrosive underneath, wrapped up in a danceable critique of entitlement, objectification and the strange performative likability expected of women in both art and life. “I started writing these songs as a joke,” she admits. “But over time I realised – they weren’t completely jokes. And suddenly, they were the only songs I was writing that felt real.”

Across its fourteen tracks, The Diary of Elon Lust lands as a satirical concept album told entirely from Elon’s perspective, offering a blend of archetype, confession and cultural mirror. Earlier singles “All You Need Is Lust” and “The Perfect Girl” introduced this strange persona, whose arrogance and charm serve as commentary on a broader culture that rewards both. But through Elise’s lens, it’s never just parody; within the humour sits a biting honesty about how women tackle being heard, seen and commodified and how easily those experiences get dismissed as overreaction.

“I didn’t realise until later how much I felt like I had to be palatable. 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,” she reflects. On The Diary of Elon Lust, she drops that mask to offer a record that stings as much as it grooves, one that challenges as much as it entertains.

Watch the music video for A Little Blood below

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