What's Happening with Baby Jane: The Horror-Story Protagonist Leading EDM, and a Coven

June 10, 2026

Baby Jane, born to Soviet immigrants and based in Los Angeles, is the viral electronic artist dominating the future EDM scene. Her discography is a fusion of her background in Russian pop and love for hardstyle EDM. Her angelic take on the grungy, bass-driven beat results in her own niche genre, angelcore. If it wasn't her music, Baby Jane herself looks like an angel lost from heaven with her long blonde hair and big dark eyes and upturned nose; her style is a walking depiction of a gothic lolita horror protagonist. She looked straight out of a Saw trap during her brilliant HÖR set — which she mixed her own discography with the likes of KoЯn and the Hereditary soundtrack — wearing a fanmade medevial torture device. Her music videos look shot in a horror game scene or another parallel world, one that is always dark and eerie yet feels strangely delicate and understanding.

She's always been drawn to the occult and especially the impact it's had on music, therefore her own music visuals take form in occult symbols, desolate fields, dark vignettes, abandoned concrete buildings, and surrealist horror. Baby Jane creates her own world for esotericism to thrive based on her own religious manifesto which is founded in spirituality and love, resulting in a close-knit fanbase driven by the same ethics and musical rhythm. The Coven (her fans) anticipates her third album, Winter Forever, set to release July 10th. Winter Forever embodies the paradox in isolation and liberation, sadness and escapism, introversion and transcendence; finding sanctity in the cold.

Interview and Words by Amara Korinko
Photos Courtesy of David Nikolic and Yana Galuz

I had the privilege to speak with the ethereal, sweet miss Baby Jane, based in Los Angeles. Born to Soviet immigrants in Oakland, I asked how it must be to perform in the place you grew up. She solidified herself as relatable when she shared she was never uber popular and prefers to keep a small circle, so having a supportive crowd show up purely for your music is amazing. She fully dedicated herself to music at the age of fourteen and has since built an impressive portfolio rewarded with a fanbase just as dedicated to her. She's built a whole world for fans to get lost in, and in this world you're one of three things: a cowboy, warrior, or goddess. What makes Baby Jane such an imaginative creator is her open indulgence in fantasy and wistfulness, with love being the bottom line of everything.

Your name is an obvious nod to the classic thriller, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? [in which ‘Baby Jane’ — an aging former child star — torments her wheelchair-bound sister Blanche — a famous actress following Baby Jane’s short-lived success]. Do you resonate more with the pursuit for fame or indulgence in retribution?

The initial spark of inspiration when I was watching that movie was [Jane's] desperation, so the former. Her whole behavior was kinda pathetic and ego-driven and I'm seventeen watching thinking, "You know what, it is pretty embarrassing to pursue this and trying so hard to get attention from people. Why deny that that's a big aspect of why we pursue [fame]?" So I decided just to wear that. Additionally, it reminds me of the love that I share for classic movies with my dad; we watched it together for the first time.

Yes, I saw it was a tradition for you guys to watch film noir movies every Sunday? That's a really sweet routine to have. Your instagram handle is @babyjanelives — what everyday routines or mundanities make you feel alive?

Everyday is kind of the same: wake up, work on my project, try to stay inspired, try to be in nature. I drive through the canyons a lot. I pray everyday so that's changed my life and gives me a lot of stability.

Your fanbase is dubbed The Coven with you as their High Priestess. What's the synopsis of your own religious manifesto?

I have one! It’s kind of like the bottom of the iceberg when it comes to my coven. When you join the discord you sort yourself into one of three archetypes: the cowboy, the goddess, the warrior. There's also the Six Principles of Terem — which are kind of like rules to live by, not so much a religion but a spiritual guideline [each spiritual archetype unlocks The Innate Superpowers of They. The Six Principles of Terem will lead them to The Divine Meadow]. And there's The Noble and Slow Burning Pleasures of the Simulation, which is another group of thoughts and ideologies... The whole thing is based on finding your own relationship with love and spirituality and empowerment. It's a cool thing fans can get into. I have a lot of plans for it but right now the music comes first.

How did you come to this arrangement of the three archetypes? Do these three share a common characteristic?

Each archetype represents a spiritual path and the way that you feel empowered in life. All of them have short stories you can find on terem.xyz.

[The cowboy is on a quest for personal freedom, the warrior for moral purpose, and the goddess for genuine connection. The cowboy believes in some place else, the warrior righteousness, the goddess beauty; once they learn that it does not exist until it ceases to be sought they will learn peace.]

Which archetype do you identify with? Or are you a secret fourth thing? After taking the quiz and reading about each archetype, I'd like to identify as a cowboy-goddess.

You might be the first fusion. I’m the original cowboy, the first cowboy.

When you're on the decks, you don a medieval-looking torture device, commonly called branks, used as public punishment to silence women. Tell me the story behind the branks. It's meant to allude to a song of yours and I heard it was fanmade, is that true? It's a visual element that adds to your virality. Did you always plan to incorporate the mask into your image?

I guess the origin origin is when I was in Luca, Italy and I went to a medieval torture museum. I must've seen something [that got me] really into torture devices and learning about them. On my first album, Otherworld, I wrote a song called “Put Me in the Branks”. My super og fans heard that song and one of them is a carpenter/welder in Alabama. One day he just said in the discord “Send me your head measurements” - shoutout Jack Hawkins! - and it kind of lined up with when I was going to do HÖR Berlin and I decided it'd be pretty cool to wear it. It all happened very organically.

Do you plan to invest in more?

I did six dates in the U.S. where I wore a lighter replica made out of aluminum that I can travel with. I like the visual of it but I am thinking I don't know if I want to DJ in it every single time; I have other ideas I want to showcase. So I'm just going to follow my intuition.

I feel like you have an intuition that's spot on.

I appreciate that. It's practicing it not questioning it, because I think we all have intuition but it's just, how loud are the doubts?

During a performance you transition from a silent, muzzle-bearing, bouncing DJ to an energetic, twirling live performer. Do you have any sensation in this transition, in the moment of breaking yourself free of the muzzle?

I love the theatrical element… it's a performance, it's very much Baby Jane, it feels really special. There is a satisfaction [from] the reaction I get from the crowd every time I take it off and they're excited I'm about to sing.

You've recently finished a month of the Strange Days Tour — congratulations! What was your most memorable rose and thorn from the experience? Any buds planted for what's to come next?

The rose was meeting the fans, that was just really, really crazy. I get a lot of dms and you see the numbers and the stats and the comments online, but it's so different to actually go face to face and meet the people who listen to your music. The thorn was some of the sleeping situations. I'm looking forward to playing more shows in more cities. Strange Days will continue — that was the first one, Strange Days is the name for that particular hybrid set so I'm going to be touring more dates with that. This summer I'm trying to set up some Europe stuff.

You bring the hardstyle of European rave culture to the the U.S., simultaneously bridging international genres and leading the western sound of new wave electronic trance. What would you like to see more of in the western scene?

There is an incredible, incredible level of creativity and community in the electronic scene in Eastern Europe right now. I really love that I've found kind of like a virtual sense of community there with a lot of the producers that I work with - like LONOWN and akiaura - and people in the angelcore scene and wave music and witch house. I really love being able to perform that in the U.S. and singing English songs over it. I just hope that more people discover the genre, how inspired what's going on over there is. It's completely not derivative. I think in the U.S. it's real easy to get stuck in an echo chamber of what's popular and what's moving and then you just kind of have all of these little clones — respectfully. I guess there's clones of that [in Europe] too, but it does feel like I've found a really cool sense of community and I'd love to bring more of that to the mainstream here.

About your upcoming album, Winter Forever, you said it was initially meant to express loneliness but instead morphed to explore personal freedom and escapism (very much embodying the cowboy archetype). Do you find that true individual freedom comes with a trade off of loneliness? Which would you rather be: truly free but alone or bound to limitations but within a community?

I do, it's a double edge sword. I'd rather be truly free and alone. I think that's what the cowboy archetype represents — funny how it all ties back in — complete detachment.

It's an artform. We’re so easily attached to things in a way that ends up holding you back from being open to possibilities and change.

Everything is changing all the time, then as soon as you start grasping on to something, there's death.

Your sophomore album is titled A Grave Marked Strange; How do you want your own gravestone marked?

Maybe "Unmarked". Or a mirror.

The through line with all my music is just duality; there's always a little bit of darkness and a little bit of light and a little bit of fantasy and a little bit of honesty.

Your album will be released in a little over a month now. If A Grave Marked Strange represented the grave we'll meet at, how will Winter Forever expand upon your materializing world? What are some of the album's key takeaways?

I think A Grave Marked Strange represented a place outside of circumstance where the perfect romance could exist. When I started Winter Forever, it was about such a deep feeling of cynicism and loneliness and then through the music I discovered that - kind of like we were just talking about - that is the gateway to experience in life and joy and complete surrender to everything. The album is about personal liberation. The through line with all my music is just duality; there's always a little bit of darkness and a little bit of light and a little bit of fantasy and a little bit of honesty.

Your persona — both visually and musically — is very grounded in mysticism and horror, and the world you've simulated is dark yet delicate. What is it about these gothic visuals that captivate you?

I like that it exists outside of any frame of time. It's supposed to be otherworldly and fantastical and not rooted in whats happening now with trends. I want people to look back at my visuals and not be able to tell when it was shot.

I love that it plays a lot into fantasy, to me thats the whole point of dress. Playing more into fantasy is your association with gaming. Your brand image is adjacent to the eerie Silent Hill, your song “Eternal Embrace” is featured in the indie horror game Scary Shawarma Kiosk, and you’ve hosted a Halloween meet and greet on Roblox. The gaming community seems to support you as much as you draw from it. Is gaming a form of escapism you practice?

No, I don't game at all. I like the visuals that people have compared some of my videos to, like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, that made me get into the aesthetics of it. I used the original Silent Hill game on an old CRT in the "Starry Eyed" music video and that was the homage for what happened to "Eternal Embrace" and how it went viral on Roblox. I think that the surreal visuals represent emotion better than it does the details of a story.

What would your role be in a horror film/game?

I would be a lost protagonist for sure. I was thinking today how I want to create a short film where I play both the terrified protagonist and also the creature.

Winter Forever is a pioneer of the ethereal synthwave microgenre “angelcore”, in contrast to the gothic/witch house of former albums. As you delve further into your career, do you see yourself mastering one niche or constantly exploring new sonic landscapes?

I don't really want to be too precious with one niche because I think that stagnates you. I think it will expand. This one we expanded a lot but all the songs sound very much me. There's a lot of hard style in it like all of the niches have blended together in a way that it has created something different.

Music

Rituals of Love: KUBORAUM, ASIANDOPEBOYS and the Geography of Transformation

Part performance, part ritual, part musical anthropology, Ocean Cage emerged from Tianzhuo Chen and collaborator Siko Setyanto's research into the whaling communities of Lamalera, Indonesia. Yet what interested Chen was never documentation. Instead, he became fascinated by a worldview where life and death, violence and gratitude, human and non-human existence remain fundamentally intertwined.

"The whale is prey, but also ancestor, gift from God and sacrifice," Chen explains. "What touched me wasn't simply the ritual itself, but the fact that life and death weren't separated."

The result is a work suspended between reverence and discomfort. Traditional Indonesian cosmologies collide with electronic music, experimental performance, club culture, and contemporary mythology. Ancient structures are neither preserved nor abandoned; they are transformed.

For Chen, ritual and rave culture are far less distant than they appear. "I think ritual and rave already share the same structure," he says.

Repetition, trance, exhaustion, collective synchronization. Music has always been a method for accessing altered states, whether through drums or electronic frequencies.

That collision between ancestral knowledge and contemporary experience runs throughout the entire Venice program. The performances feel simultaneously ancient and futuristic, existing somewhere between ceremony, theatre, concert, hallucination, and collective meditation.

Chen's accompanying performance, Moyang 先祖 & Seaman 漁師, extends this exploration even further. Through figures such as the Ancestor, Fisherman, and Sun Moon God, the work navigates a landscape where memory, fiction, spirituality, and imagination become inseparable.

"Today we spend so much time asking what we can learn from AI," Chen says. "But what if we looked back and asked what we could learn from our ancestors?"

For KUBORAUM founders Sergio Eusebi and Livio Graziottin, the attraction to ASIANDOPEBOYS was immediate.

"The first time we saw an ASIANDOPEBOYS performance on video, we literally went crazy," Eusebi recalls. "We became obsessed."

What struck them wasn't simply the visual intensity of the work but its refusal to separate aesthetics from ethics, spirituality from politics, beauty from community.

"It was powerful, immersive, beautiful, and raw all at once," he says. "Spiritual and punk at the same time. Contemporary, futuristic and ancient. Traditional and experimental."

This collapse of categories mirrors KUBORAUM's own philosophy. Since its inception, the project has existed somewhere between fashion label, art collective, performance platform, design studio, and cultural community. The eyewear itself functions less as an accessory than as what the founders describe as a "mask", not something that conceals identity but something that amplifies it.

That same philosophy extends naturally into KUBORAUM Editions, the group's vinyl-focused publishing platform. Every release is treated as an artist edition, existing simultaneously as music, object, archive, and cultural artifact.

In an era increasingly dominated by digital consumption, Ocean Cage arrives as something stubbornly physical: a gatefold vinyl featuring a 16-page booklet filled with photographs, texts, sketches, storyboards, and artworks documenting the project's evolution.

"We believe an object can become a container of culture," says Eusebi. "Collecting an object is also a way of belonging to it."

For KUBORAUM, the tactile experience remains inseparable from the music itself. Sound exists alongside paper stock, typography, photography, texture, and design. The record becomes less a product and more a portable world.

This idea of world-building extends beyond the object itself. Both ASIANDOPEBOYS and KUBORAUM operate through networks of collaboration that stretch across continents, connecting Berlin, Indonesia, China, Italy, and countless other cultural geographies.

Travel, in this sense, becomes more than movement. It becomes methodology.

The title of KUBORAUM’s event series, We Travel To Know Our Own Geography, suggests that understanding ourselves requires first encountering others. "Through encountering the Other, we ultimately come to know ourselves more deeply," Eusebi explains. It is perhaps here that the project's relationship to love becomes most visible.

Not romantic love. Something larger.

A form of collective responsibility. A willingness to remain vulnerable to transformation. A belief that identity is never fixed but constantly evolving through encounter, movement, ritual, and exchange.

For Chen, love appears not as desire but as interdependence.

For KUBORAUM, it becomes an active choice.

To love means taking a position toward life itself. It means deciding to fight for something, to defend it, to make sacrifices for it, rather than simply consuming its pleasures.

In Venice, surrounded by art world openings, collectors, curators, and cultural tourism,the festival offered something increasingly rare: a reminder that performance can still function as ritual, that music can still transform perception, and that travel can still be a tool for understanding who we are.

Or perhaps, who we might become.

Music

Cole Knight Is Keeping the Dance Floor Alive When We Need It Most

June 02, 2026

Miami-based performer, DJ, and producer Cole Knight has long grounded her music in authenticity. Blending techno, hard groove, and house, her sound has cemented her place as a powerful force in the music scene. Raised in southern Illinois, creativity was an instinctive part of who she was, even when her surroundings offered little room for it.

“It's always been in me. I do believe that being creative is part of being human. We are beings meant to create, to transmute inspiration into tangible reality.”

Recently wrapping up her Miami Music Week party for the Knight Club event series, we sat down with the multifaceted creative to discuss her inspirations, the rawness of the electronic music scene, her time on the prairie, and the mantras that keep us afloat in these uncertain days.

Words and Interview by Bernice Nguyen
Photography by Peter Donaghy

I love hearing about people’s upbringings, especially in the creative scene. Everyone’s answers are different, but I find that the common denominator amongst the majority of answers I get is simply doing it for the love of the game early on. So I first want to ask, how did you enter the music/creative field?

When I was a child, I played piano and guitar quite seriously. It's always been in me. I do believe being a "creative" is a part of being human. We are beings meant to create, to transmute inspiration into tangible reality. When I was able to realize that as a career, it was around the time of COVID. I was studying cymatics and sound meditation in Mexico, and I said to myself, if not now, never. After that, I just started putting my music out there, and the rest is history.

What or who would you say were your biggest inspirations growing up?

I grew up in rural central southern Illinois, so my inspiration in my early years was spending time alone in the prairie. I listened to songs on my MP3 player under the covers at night, as I wasn't allowed to listen during the day in case my mom would catch me listening to music she didn't approve of, like Fergie and the Pussycat Dolls, my favorite.

I read that you previously studied computer science, which I think is so cool. Do you think there’s a connection between studying technology and creating music through technology and sound?

I think the skillset of deep focus, problem-solving, interacting with software, and knowing there are infinite ways to get to the right answer helps navigate production software, yes.

A conversation that I hear a lot is the discussion of phones/social media controlling the experience of concerts, and going out in general. As a performer, do you have any thoughts on this?

I think the phone is a mind-centered experience, and the dancefloor is meant to be a body-centered experience. If I'm giving my energy to a crowd that’s not dancing and they are all more worried about getting a video for socials than even hearing the music, then it feels very draining. However, when the crowd is actually dancing and giving me back emotion and response, then it feels more like a charging— an energy exchange. It feels okay for people to be excited and want to document that, but it feels inauthentic when the people “documenting” are not dancing.

What is your favorite city to play in?

Miami, my home. The community I have there is real ravers; we get down.

You’ve shared that storytelling means a lot to you. Since music is such a subjective experience, when you make music, do you hope listeners connect with your personal stories, create their own meanings from it, or maybe a bit of both?

My only hope when I'm creating music is that the tangible joy it gives me to find a groove that feels sexy and exciting enough to share can connect with others. My lyrics are riddles and rhymes about my life, so I'm sure they can be interpreted by the listener in many ways. It feels like giving out little codes and secrets to those who are paying attention.

What is something about the electronic scene you wish you could change? What’s something you hope never changes?

I wish people didn't care so much about vocals, haha. I love music that's more about finding the trance and the rhythm than singing along.

I hope that the club and festival scene never loses its rawness. I love the characters!!

With the state of the world right now, creativity may be our saving grace. What advice would you give your younger self?

Love always wins.

Creative ruts often happen to artists. I get into them more often than I'd prefer. When and if you get these, what’s a quote, mantra, lesson, or reminder you tell yourself in times of question or struggle?

I usually pick up Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Way: An Act of Being, and open to a random page. That book is like the bible. Then I go to the ocean and turn off my brain. Sometimes we need to do nothing to find everything.

Music

Veronica Everheart Held her Album Release Show at a Muay Thai Gym— With Live Fighting

We were asked to remove our shoes. Without my boots, I discovered that jumping on the rubber gym mat in socks was oddly fun, and I was ready to dance.

Guys in undone collared shirts started a loose mosh to opener ideasforconversation's analog dance set, followed by Star’s Revenge's alt-rock set. Their hook, “Me and my friends we fuck around," fit the feeling. No expectations – only pure fun.

As the band played on, the lights lifted and two gloved men entered the ring: we were about to witness the first fight. The crowd danced and cheered to the guys duking it out, punching and kicking and spinning around one another.

Then Veronica Everheart took the stage. Veronica’s voice oscillated between mellow and fiery as she sang her raw, witty lyrics. In the track "22 & Counting," she recalls a "white boy in Dimes Square," who gets off on his "Substack and Marlboros."

Veronica played acoustic guitar, and Juni mastered distortions and samples. Her sound pulls from Joni Mitchell, LCD Soundsystem, Nine Inch Nails, and The Velvet Underground. Juni identified it as “post-alternative, digital singer-songwriter."

The question, of course, was how a Muay Thai gym became the venue for the show.

Veronica Everheart was uninterested in following the standard venue-selection route after three years working on the album. “I wanted something memorable, especially in New York, where everything demands your attention,” said Veronica.

Juni is a Muay Thai fighter who trains at DiamondHeart. After an unsatisfying meeting discussing a venue, he went to practice. “I was looking around, and I was like, ‘What the fuck? Why don’t we just do it here?”

The gym, 3rd Space, and the band’s record label, Pack Records, brought the vision to life. But an empty gym wasn’t satisfactory: “It would have to have live fights,” said Veronica.

The fighters didn’t need convincing to do the show. “People who do Muay Thai – they are obsessed with it. They’ll take any opportunity,” said Juni. "They were just down for the love of the game.”

It’s that devotion to one's craft that carried Veronica Everheart through the production of “Lighter in the Morning.”

“This album, to us, is what happens when two people completely give their entire lives to an endeavor,” said Juni. Veronica still lived in her home state of Arizona when the duo began the project. For two years, she flew to NYC multiple times a year for 5-day recording stints lasting 17 hours a day. Juni said that the album was born "by some grace of God.”

“Lighter in the Morning (2/2),” released this month, completed the album she introduced in 2024 with its first iteration. Dividing the project was more about a lack of money and time than a preference. Regardless, having learned from the first half, the split defined two distinct eras.

There was a feeling of playfulness in the gym that Friday night. The musicians, fighters, and the shoeless crowd shared the feeling that they were part of something impossible to replicate.

Veronica Everheart’s album and its release show were a one-two punch.