In a world saturated with sound and scrolling, Nastiya Kai emerges like a lightning strike—arresting, unpredictable, and impossible to look away from. Born in Moscow and now floating between LA, NYC, and Paris, Nastiya is building a cinematic universe from scratch. Her sound is a visceral blend of experimental pop, glitchy textures, and velvet-laced vocals, pulsing with raw emotion and unapologetic vulnerability. With a background in fashion and a history of using personal pain as artistic fuel, she’s carved a lane that doesn’t just bend genre—it obliterates it.
Her new single, “Goodbye,” is an emotional whirlwind that captures the dizzying duality of love as both an escape and a trap. Written during a turbulent stretch in Paris, “Goodbye” blends ambient calm with lyrical chaos. The track dives headfirst into that breathless space between wanting to stay and needing to run, capturing the moment where grief meets freedom. As Nastiya herself says, it’s about everything and nothing all at once.
Entirely self-taught and fiercely independent, Nastiya Kai has become her own muse, producer, and prophet. She lets the mess show. She lets the feelings flood. And in doing so, she gives listeners permission to feel deeply, too. From battling self-doubt in isolation to learning to trust the noise in her head, Nastiya’s journey has never been about perfection—it’s been about transformation. So, whether you’re a longtime fan or just tuning in, one thing is certain: you’re not just listening to her music; you’re stepping into her psyche. Curious to hear more about how she turns emotional chaos into cinematic soundscapes? Well, good news—you don’t have to say goodbye just yet. Enjoy our conversation with Nastiya Kai:
What inspired you to write “Goodbye,” and how does it reflect your personal experiences with letting go?
“Goodbye” came together during Paris Fashion Week, when I was supposed to be focused, working, and have it together. But the second I landed, something very personal happened. Paris is already a very emotionally charged place for me. I lived there for two years, and while I have a lot of beautiful memories and people there, there’s also some darkness to it. So, being back always comes with this strange combination of comfort and sadness.
I was in the process of finishing “newnew.wav” at the time and was overwhelmed with work, and that record was not channeling the energy I was feeling in the moment, so I started working on “Goodbye”. It came together in a few days, which is how my favorite songs are born—very fast, very instinctive, before I have time to second-guess. It also became the beat I’d listen to on my way back home every day, it made me feel at peace. The original title was “Nevesoma,” which is Russian for “weightless,” and that’s what I was trying to explore.
That feeling of floating but also falling. Of breathing freely, but also gasping for air. The way love can feel like that, too.
The airport imagery came naturally after that. The movement and the idea of leaving. For me, airports are emotionally loaded spaces. I move around a lot, and whenever I do, I always say goodbye to someone at the airport, which is nothing but sadness to me.
“Goodbye” is a lot about how I feel about most things. It’s about nothing and everything at the same time.
Can you describe the emotional journey you went through while creating the single? How did it help you navigate your own feelings and cope with them?
At the time I started working on “Goodbye,” a lot of things were happening around me. Life was kind of testing me. Old memories were coming back, obstacles popping up everywhere, it was a confusing time.
I wrote the beat before the lyrics, and I remember it immediately felt like a lullaby. I’d listen to it on the way home, and it would calm me down. It sort of became my safe place. That’s how writing often works for me. I often don’t know what I’m trying to say until it’s finished. I don’t overthink it unless I’m on a deadline.
With “Goodbye,” once the lyrics were done, I looked at the song and thought, “Oh.” I discovered something new about myself. Almost a new part of me. I knew I was carrying a lot of pain and trauma around, but now heaviness, and I’m not sure how to put this into words, but this turned out to be an entirely different emotion. A lot of things suddenly made sense.
The emotional duality of suffocation and intoxication in a relationship is something many listeners might relate to. What message or emotion do you hope lingers most after someone hears the track?
For years, I didn’t allow myself to feel. I shut it all down, and honestly, that ruined me. I got so used to surviving that I forgot what it meant to actually connect to myself. So now, with everything I do, I want to help people feel.
I want them to allow the emotion to radiate through their body, whatever that looks like. Crying in the bathroom with your mascara everywhere, screaming, throwing your phone at a wall, laughing like a maniac, being angry, being rude—whatever it is. We’re human. It’s okay. You don’t have to stay composed all the time.
We’re told to keep everything inside, to be polite and polished, but that’s not real. That’s not healing. For me, music is the one place where I let it all out. I allow myself to bleed on command, so other people can finally feel something they’ve been holding in.
That’s what I want “Goodbye,” and all my music, to hold space and remind people it’s okay to feel everything. Even when it’s messy. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts. You don’t have to run from it.
With the release of your EP “newnew.wav,” how do you feel your sound has evolved from your previous work in the “Demon Era”?
Demon Era was me just starting out. I knew nothing about music or the industry; I was just experimenting. Before that, I had a few songs I made for fun, but Demon Era was the first body of work I took seriously. I always said my first project would be a memoir, and that’s what it was. Every song was about something from my past—things I had experienced, people I needed to let go of, emotions I hadn’t processed. I wrote it all, released it, and never looked back. It helped me close that chapter of my life.
To be honest, I’m very hard on myself; I wouldn’t call Demon Era a perfect project. But I’m proud of it because it was real. Just me and my friend, locked in a basement, trying things, learning on the go. That project ended with one of the worst depressive episodes of my life. But what followed was the best summer of my life. That contrast, going from complete darkness to light, was what gave birth to newnew.wav.
newnew.wav is completely different. It’s not about the past anymore. It’s about me living in the present, figuring out who I am musically. It became a bridge to my next chapter. Through that, I taught myself how to produce, how to storytell through music, and how to trust my ideas. It wasn’t meant to be a hit or to please anyone. It was made for me, with love. It carries stories, and it carries joy.
And now, with “Goodbye,” I feel like I’m stepping into something new again. I’m no longer hiding behind my computer. I’m ready to show my face, to step into the world as a full artist, not just as a producer or someone working in the background. newnew.wav helped me build that confidence. It taught me who I am.
As a self-taught artist, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced in developing your unique sound and style?
No one tells you how loud self-doubt can be when there’s no one validating your instincts. I had to unlearn the idea that perfection is the goal. The biggest hurdle was learning to trust my taste, my wrong notes, my weird textures, and my unpolished takes. That’s where the good stuff lives anyway.
I have two very different people living inside me. One of them believes perfection doesn’t exist and genuinely loves things that are messy, raw, and real. I love myself more when I’m imperfect and weird. But then there’s the perfectionist in me living by a hyper-structured schedule, planning everything to the second, and wanting full control over everything.
These two versions of me are always pulling at each other, and duality shows up in my process. I’ll write something experimental and imperfect and love it. But then I’ll come back to it a few days later and start second-guessing everything. I’ll notice every flaw. I’ll worry that people won’t understand it, or worse, that they’ll question whether I even know what I’m doing.
The hardest part is not developing your sound but staying on track. Keeping tunnel vision in a reality that’s constantly trying to distract you or make you second-guess yourself. Especially with social media, where people want to give advice you didn’t ask for.
So for me, the real challenge isn’t finding a unique sound, it’s trusting it.
You’ve been open about your experience with borderline personality disorder. How does that emotional landscape inform your music without defining it?
Living with BPD means I feel everything in all caps. It’s exhausting, and also the reason my songs feel like mood swings with beats. But I’m not a diagnosis in eyeliner; I’m a person who uses music to metabolize intensity. I don’t want to be romanticized or pitied; I just want to make honesty sound beautiful.
Living with BPD gave me a lot of stories. Especially from my younger years, before I started therapy or understood my diagnosis. So I have a lot to write about. But it also made me very curious about myself. I studied Psychology in university, and even though I do not want to pursue this professionally, I sometimes literally feel like my own experiment. Like, I want to see how deep I can go into my brain.
That shows up in my songwriting. Sometimes I stay on the surface, and the song is more about the feeling in the moment. But other times, I go deep. And when I do, it’s like, wow… okay, that was intense. It’s not always planned. It just happens. But it teaches me something every time.
Also, BPD is an emotional rollercoaster. It’s like riding a wave, sometimes multiple waves at once, and that’s also what music is to me. It moves fast, it’s unpredictable. So in that sense, the experience of BPD and the process of making music are very similar.
You seem to blur the line between persona and personal. How do you protect your inner world while still sharing so much of it?
I used to overshare all the time, especially on social media. It felt natural. I didn’t think twice about it, and honestly, for years, I was okay with that. But at one point, that changed. I became happier, more grounded, and I started experiencing life more quietly. That’s when I realized I didn’t want to share everything anymore.
There are things in my life now that feel too sacred to give away. And for a while, I thought I owed people access to everything, that I had to show the beautiful parts, not to show off, but just because I wanted to share the good. But lately, I’ve felt this need to just be happy in private.
Also, this might sound silly, but sharing takes time. Being on your phone takes time. And I started noticing I didn’t want to spend that time anymore. I want to feel the sun on my skin. I want to listen when people speak, not just hear them. I want to make real memories, not just capture them.
I still share through my music. That’s where everything goes now. All the stories, the feelings, the emotional waves I don’t post anymore—they’re in the songs. That feels more beautiful to me. Instead of giving people updates every day, I give them one piece of art that holds everything. One song carries the whole story. And that feels more honest.
Are there any artists or genres that have particularly influenced your work on “newnew.wav” or your upcoming single?
With newnew.wav, there weren’t a lot of outside influences, honestly. That project was very experimental for me. I built it from voice notes, field recordings, and random objects, like jars, pens, water bottles, even trees and frogs. I was sampling birds in forests, recording sounds in nature, and just seeing what I could make out of textures instead of genres. It wasn’t about recreating something I’d heard, it was about playing, exploring, and telling a story from scratch.
For “Goodbye” and the newer work, it’s kind of the same. I don’t sit down to make music with references in mind. I never think, Oh, let me try to do something like this artist or that sound. That’s just not how my process works. I usually create in my little bubble, and whatever comes out is just… what comes out.
That said, I’m sure my brain stores things without telling me. Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Grimes and Yung Lean, especially since he just dropped a new album. I grew up listening to him, so it’s been nostalgic. But none of it directly shaped the music. If anything, those influences show up later, once the work is already done.
Photos / Diana Amefolle
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