This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.Sofia Isella Is Dark Pop’s Next Breakout Star

Katie Berohn, Photographed by Cameron McCool. Styled by Alex White.Wed, April 8, 2026 at 12:00 PM UTC

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Sofia Isella Is the Next Princess of Dark PopCameron McCool

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It might seem like Sofia Isella inhabits a Tim Burton-esque world. The singer-songwriter posts dimly lit music videos of herself reminiscent of horror movies. She often cakes herself in dirt and lets her long, dark hair hang limply in front of her face, like a real-life Corpse Bride. Her lyrics, too, often veer into the macabre. For Isella, this is all part of building an immersive universe for her fans.

“I like looking at something and feeling like you can taste it,” says the 21-year-old Los Angeles native. Isella creates an almost visceral feeling through visual storytelling—in the videos she shares to social media, she twists into grotesque shapes, lets ants march on her skin, and buries her face into the ground. Onstage, she says, “My body is the main visual. I’m up onstage alone. I don’t have a band. It’s just me and my instruments surrounding me. I love giving my body to the crowd.” Isella first got into music because of her love of songwriting and poetry, heavily influenced by her mother, Kelli Bean Miranda, who is also a writer. Trained as a classical violinist, her music has since morphed into dark, alternative pop, her vocals ranging from cathartic whispers to guttural screams.

Isella owes much of her early success to TikTok, where songs like “Hot Gum” and “The Doll People” went viral. Her new EP, Something Is a Shell, comes out on April 17. “I had a lot more fun with this EP than I have in the past,” she says. “I wrote a lot of it while I was on tour, so it’s from a live perspective.” The singer is currently a guest for Florence + the Machine on the band’s Everybody Scream Tour and also opened for Taylor Swift in London. Isella is soaking it all in as she looks to the future. “I’ve never done drugs before, but I assume it’s something like walking in an empty Wembley Stadium,” she says. “I wish I could have recorded the feeling.”

Jacket, Stella McCartney. Necklace, Cartier.Cameron McCool 2025 -

SONG OF HERS TO PUT ON REPEAT: “Everybody Supports Women”

FOR FANS OF: Billie Eilish, post-punk dark pop music, and slam poetry

What was your process like while you were writing Something Is a Shell?

A lot of it started from production and going back and forth with one of my favorite people, [producer] Mr. Hudson. We would just make some random pile [of music] in the studio during a 30-minute-long session, and I would take that session home, rearrange it, and structure it. Then I would write the melody and lyrics for the whole song.

How do you approach songwriting?

I have this giant notebook that is brain-dumping completely. A lot of the lyrics will come from pages and pages of junk. I’ll look back at it a month later and find it more interesting than I did when I was originally writing it. “The Doll People” started as a brain drain of total mush. The first words I wrote on the page that day were, “The doll people are not men.” I like to take things as a puzzle and figure out what I actually meant.

You’ve said your songs deal with “the gore of womanhood.” How does it feel to be a woman in America in 2026?

Fucking hell. It feels like it has gotten so incredibly dark and gruesome and grotesque in every sense that it can be, and it is terrifying.

What does feminism mean to you right now?

I was reading this book that was talking about how the opposite of patriarchy isn’t where women are doing the same thing to men that men are doing to us. It is a much gentler, kinder world where it is not treating men the way that they have treated us.

Who or what are you most inspired by in your art?

I go on a rant a lot about the poets that I love: Sylvia Plath, Margaret Atwood, and Mona Awad. But my mom is phenomenal at writing. [She’s written] some of the most legendary work I’ve ever read in my life.

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Jacket, pants, Stella McCartney. Rings, Cartier.Cameron McCool 2025How would you describe your fan base?

When I was thinking about crowd-surfing for the first time, a lot of my artist friends were telling me to not do it because people are going to grope you, they’re going to start taking off all your clothes, and they’re going to start passing you around in horrible ways. I already had a trusting relationship with my crowd, so I did it anyway. Not a single uncomfortable moment, not one. Also what surprised me a lot is the demographic that comes to my shows. There’s obviously the 15-year-old, the 23-year-old people in the front. When you get back, there are 70-year-old hard rocker dudes who are like, “I listen to Nine Inch Nails and Sofia Isella.” They’re all so respectful and kind and gentle and energized. It’s just perfect.

How important is social media in your career?

Social media is why I’m here. I have a personal love-hate relationship with it because it is sucking my brain, but it’s also giving me my world. It’s this very contradictory thing. I love creating for it. I love thinking about it. The creation part of it I love.

You were homeschooled all over the world growing up. How did that shape your career?

I would’ve been a completely different person if I went to school. I’m sure there are ways I’ve been changed that I don’t know because I didn’t know any other way, but one of the ways it’s very easy for me to see is how much it changed how I relate to kids my age. Since I was 15, I stopped hanging out with kids my age, and I’m with people who are 10 to 15, 20 years older than me, because I didn’t go to college either. I snuck into UCLA two years ago—I didn’t know if I was allowed to go, but I went to a book club. I’m badass like that, sneaking into a book club. It was only run by kids. I was like, “Who’s in charge of you people? You’re 18- to 22-year-olds, where is your teacher?” They were just running themselves, very Lord of the Flies. I was in an 18-year-old’s body and was blending in perfectly and they didn’t notice anything.

Where do you find joy?

I find the most exhilarating, fulfilled joy if I am in a pitch black room and I am singing ABBA and Queen songs with my friends, and we’re just playing with instruments and singing and dancing. I like singing to the classics when I’m with friends because there’s such a community feeling when you’re singing songs that everybody around the world knows. There’s something so powerful about the songs that everyone in the world can sing along to.

Lead image: Jacket, Stella McCartney. Necklace, Cartier.

Hair by Teddy Charles at Nevermind; makeup by Lilly Keys at A-Frame Agency; manicure by Raphael Park Charles; produced by Hyperion.

A version of this story appears in the April 2026 issue of ELLE.

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