Calgary’s Kiesza feels ‘super vulnerable’ as she releases debut album

TORONTO – With the one-shot, non-stop “Hideaway,” Calgary’s Kiesza introduced herself to the world with a fluttering tune and a ceaseless flurry of nimble footwork — and it seems like she hasn’t stopped moving since.

The song topped charts in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and the U.K. while reaching the Top 5 in many others, including Canada, in the spring. Her debut album, “Sound of a Woman,” was completed fairly quickly before its release this week.

She’s still writing songs for other artists, she contributed music to a 2015 Dreamworks film, and she has designs on making her own cult flick eventually — not as a composer, but a filmmaker. Of course, that’s joined by other potential pursuits, including a fashion line. A European tour is also imminently upcoming.

No longer an indie artist, Kiesza couldn’t be blamed if she decided to delegate some responsibilities. Yet there she was recently touring possible settings for her second video, “No Enemiesz.”

“The producer just stopped for a minute and said: ‘The artist never comes to the location scout. You realize this? If you have other things to do…'” Kiesza recalled during a recent interview in Toronto. “I’m like, no, I need to see the rooms. I was involved in saying this is the room I want and I want it to look this way. And this is the section I’m dancing in here.

“Sometimes the people, they don’t give you that time for your art because they’d rather have you doing other things, more promo, but I put so much effort into the quality of my work. So for me, it’s the most important thing that I put the time in and the preparation. The art is everything to me.”

So even though the turnaround on “Sound of a Woman” was fairly quick, it’s tough to doubt Kiesza’s commitment to the material.

Aside from the years-in-the-works synth bath “So Deep,” these 13 songs came together very quickly — something Kiesza’s comfortable with, given that breakout “Hideaway” was written during an hourlong ride to the airport.

That sleekly propulsive number leads off the album, and while its pop house lean generally hints at the sound of “Woman,” the record refuses to stay fixed in one place too long.

Hip hop crops up on the vamping “Losin’ My Mind” and even moreso on “Bad Thing,” a showcase for dexterous Brooklyn teen rapper Joey Badass, one of a series of genres Kiesza hopscotches through: soul, Chicago house, R&B and EDM.

“They all have a place in my mind from a similar era,” she summarized.

That would be the ’90s, when the 25-year-old was exposed to a variety of sounds by her musically adventurous mother.

Some of Kiesza’s earliest memories feature her mom hot-stepping around the kitchen while club music poured from the speakers.

“I don’t know how she got into the whole Chicago house thing, because she’s from Calgary — which is very much a country-music town,” laughed Kiesza, born Kiesa Ellestad, reasoning that Michael Jackson was a gateway.

“She was always busting out, making breakfast for us in the morning as kids, busting out these massive dance records with divas singing on them. We’d wake up to my mom singing at the top of her lungs.

“I was really influenced by that,” she added. “The first album I wanted to buy was ‘Dance Mix ’94.'”

Her upbringing was similarly marked by broad aptitude and a wandering interest. She trained as a ballerina young but hurt her knee, began sailing at 13 and worked on 40-metre-high boats at 16, and a year later joined the reserves of the Royal Canadian Navy, where she proved a crack shot.

She studied music at Selkirk College in B.C. before being granted a scholarship to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Her earliest compositions were simple and quiet.

“When I started writing music on the guitar, it started off very folky because of my limited ability to play,” she said. “It was slow, soft melodies. But then as I got better on the guitar, I started exploring different sounds.”

As usual, she jumped around a bit.

“I was in a death metal band, a jazz band, a rock band, a solo pop thing where I wore spandex and aviator goggles dyed different colours,” she recalled. “I felt like I was just trying on different hats and they didn’t fit.

“And then writing ‘Hideaway,’ which happened out of nowhere, and realizing this is so right, realizing that this is the music that’s etched into my DNA, since being in the womb. It just flows out of me naturally.”

At Berklee, pop music was the subject of derision or outright dismissal — “at music school, pop is considered not music” — but Kiesza studied it like an academic. She wanted to look carefully at trends in country, rock, pop, dance and rap, figuring that penning songs for artists across genres represented the best application of her talent.

That songwriting career has been moved to the side for now, though she’s waiting to find out whether three of her songs chosen by Rihanna will appear on the Barbadian star’s next album.

Still, she’s remained aware of what’s out there, and she sees a key difference in the music she’s composing and the adrenalized stuff ruling radio.

“Recent dance songs, like EDM, are so fast that all you can do is fist pump along to them,” said Kiesza, who now lives in New York. “And once you’ve danced to the chorus you’re so out of breath you have to take a break to get through the verses. Then it’s the drop again — it’s so crazy.

“If you slow it down to 120 (beats per minute), it’s like running long distance — you can go steady and keep a steady pace. You go to those underground house nights, people dance non-stop, all night.”

She says she’s writing her second album now, utilizing the one big indulgence she’s allowed since “Hideaway” hit: a new guitar.

Originally, Kiesza thought of her solo music as a “side project” and figured it would be “underground, maybe with an indie following.”

A bigger than anticipated audience is paying attention now, and she knows it.

“It’s hard to open up all your emotions to the world,” she said. “I feel very — super — vulnerable.”

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