Elise Trouw drops ‘The Diary of Elon Lust’

For nearly a decade, San Diego-born singer-songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Elise Trouw has been walking a unique path in the music world. From jazz-inspired grooves to pop hooks and alternative rock edge, Elise’s sound has always been a reflection of her adventurous creativity, forming as the product of someone who never stopped asking what might happen if she pushed a little further.

Her early rise is now something of an internet legend; in the late 2010s, while most artists were still figuring out how to stand out online, Trouw turned her bedroom into a creative laboratory. Her live-looping videos where she bounced between drums, bass, keys and vocals stunned viewers for their flair and fluidity. One mashup in particular, blending Foo Fighters’ “Everlong” with Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love,” went viral, earning millions of views and landing her a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! almost overnight.

Her 2017 debut album Unraveling landed as a genre-breaking record that sparked a sold-out headlining tour and a two-week arena run supporting Incubus on their 20 Years of Make Yourself tour. Collaborations with the likes of Seal, Todd Rundgren and Travis Barker soon followed, positioning Elise as a fiercely independent, virtuosic and creatively fearless artist.

Now, with her new full-length record titled The Diary of Elon Lust, she steps into riskier, darker and more satirical territory via an album that finds her at her most provocative, examining the cultural and personal pressures that shape her artistic vision. Witty, uncomfortable and self-aware, it’s an album that dances and bites at the same time.

The LP thematically revolves around a fictional alter ego, Elon Lust, a composite of every arrogant, dismissive or manipulative comment Elise has ever encountered. “I started writing these songs as a joke, but over time I realised — they weren’t completely jokes. And suddenly, they were the only songs I was writing that felt real,” she shares. Through Elon’s perspective, she holds up a cracked mirror to gendered entitlement, toxic performance and the strange balancing act women in music often face: to be desirable but not too sexual, confident but not threatening, talented but never difficult.

Opening track and lead single, “All You Need Is Lust,” flips the Beatles’ iconic mantra into something sinisterly playful and over hypnotic grooves and layered harmonies, Elon preaches his gospel of self-interest and commodification, love replaced by appetite, connection by consumption. The video, directed by Trouw herself, leans fully into surrealism with cherry-headed dancers, giant breast costumes and choreography inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. It’s deliberately strange and unsettling, what Elise calls “somehow sexual, but not sexualised.”

Across its fourteen tracks, The Diary of Elon Lust plays like a conceptual fever dream, a study in persona and power dynamics, about the masks people wear to survive in systems that reward charm over being real. In stripping back her own mask, Elise has crafted something that might be her most emphatic work thus far, offering an album that grooves as it provokes, entertains as it exposes.

“I didn’t realise until later how much I felt like I had to be palatable,” she reflects. “I wanted to be seen as likable… even if that meant not being my full self.” With The Diary of Elon Lust, she stops asking for permission, resulting in a record that feels as brave as it is uncomfortable, a satirical self-portrait painted in bright pop colours and thought-provoking context.

Listen to The Diary of Elon Lust below