PARIS is Making Monsters Polite

The rising industrial pop artist discusses discomfort, power, and why explanation is a form of containment.

By Alex Marin
Photography by Micah Rosen and Dana Keller

PARIS makes industrial pop that sounds expensive, intentional, and quietly hostile to interpretation. The debut single “Consent of the Quiet” is already a chant in the wrong rooms, and its follow-up has people arguing about metaphor like it’s evidence. Whether PARIS is a persona, a provocation, or just someone refusing to sand down their edges remains unclear — but the discomfort feels deliberate.

[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.]

Pitchfork: Let’s start with the basics. Who is “Paris”? Is this a stage persona, an alter ego or is this genuinely you on stage?

PARIS: I don’t think there’s a clean line between those things.

“Paris” is the part of me that doesn’t translate myself for comfort. That’s really it. People like to call that an alter ego because it makes it feel theatrical, controllable. Like you can take the makeup off and it all goes away. But the truth is, the stage is the only place where I’m not adjusting my volume to match the room.

So yeah, it’s me. It’s just me without the manners.

Pitchfork: So, what you’re saying is that you aren’t David Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust, the alien come to earth with a message.

PARIS: No. And I think Bowie would’ve hated the way that gets flattened anyway.

Ziggy was a way to talk about things people weren’t ready to hear yet. I’m not interested in being an alien or a metaphor.

I’m not delivering a message. I don’t trust messages. They turn into instructions really fast.

Pitchfork: Have you always been interested in costumes and performance?

PARIS: Yeah. But not in the way people mean when they ask that.

I was interested in control before I was interested in performance. Costumes are just an honest version of that. They admit that everything you’re looking at is constructed instead of pretending it isn’t.

Growing up, I was always aware of how much effort people put into looking effortless. How much power lives in who gets to decide what’s “natural.” Fashion, stage clothes, uniforms — none of that is frivolous. It’s choreography. It tells you who’s allowed to be loud, who’s allowed to be seen, who gets forgiven for taking up space.

Pitchfork: Let’s talk about growing up. Musically, you kinda came out of nowhere but built a cult following really quickly. Did you grow up in a musical household?

PARIS: Not really. There was music around, but it wasn’t nurturing in that romantic way people like to imagine. It was just… there. Radios on in other rooms. Songs bleeding through walls. Nothing sacred about it.

What I grew up around more than music was noise. Tension. Things people didn’t talk about but made sure you felt. Music just happened to be the place where that stuff sounded honest instead of polite.

I didn’t learn how to play by being encouraged. I learned by trying to make something that felt as uncomfortable as the room already was.

Pitchfork: Let’s talk about discomfort, because a lot of your lyrics deal with discomfort…in where you are, your surroundings, the status quo…what draws you to that subject?

PARIS: Discomfort is just honesty without anesthesia.

Most of what we call “normal” only works if you don’t press on it too hard. You’re supposed to adapt yourself to the room, not ask why the room feels wrong. I was never very good at that part. I notice seams. I notice when something’s being held together by etiquette instead of consent.

Writing about discomfort isn’t a choice so much as a refusal to lie about where I am. If I’m uneasy, that’s information. If a room feels hostile but everyone’s smiling, that’s information too. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away — it just makes it easier for someone else to decide what it means for you.

Pitchfork: Let’s talk about your image. There are a lot of obvious comparisons to Bowie, Prince, Marilyn Manson…people who push the boundaries of gender expectations. Do you think that’s fair?

PARIS: It’s fair in the sense that people need reference points, and those are the ones they’ve been trained to recognize. Gender is one of the first systems you get handed that teaches you obedience. Not because anyone sits you down and says “obey,” but because you get rewarded and punished in a thousand tiny ways until you learn what you’re allowed to be without consequences. It’s a uniform you don’t remember putting on.

So yeah — if someone sees what I’m doing as “pushing boundaries,” I get it. But for me it’s not about being transgressive. It’s about making the uniform visible. .

Pitchfork: Let’s talk about your new single, “Consent of the Quiet.” There’s a lot of discussion about the meaning of the song, and there’s some very specific references in there. Can you tell us about the “you” you’re talking to in the song?

PARIS: People really want there to be a you they can point at. A villain, a parent, a politician, a system with a logo. That makes the song safer.

The truth is, the “you” shifts depending on who’s listening. Sometimes it’s external—authority, tradition, whatever structure taught you to stay quiet. Sometimes it’s internal. The part of you that learned how to survive by nodding, by not making things awkward, by telling yourself it’s not worth the trouble.

“Consent of the Quiet” is about the moment where you realize no one actually has to threaten you anymore. You’ve already learned how to comply on your own.

So when I say “you,” I’m not indicting a single person. I’m talking to a relationship. The one between power and the people who make it comfortable by staying silent.

Pitchfork: So it’s deliberately vague?

PARIS: Vagueness implies avoidance, like I’m hiding the point so no one can pin me down. That’s not what’s happening. I’m refusing to seal it shut. The moment you lock a meaning into place, it stops being useful and starts being something people can manage.

I’m not interested in explanation that puts people back to sleep. I’m interested in recognition. That flash where someone goes, oh… that’s what that feeling was.

Pitchfork: Some critics find your ambivalence to be highly transgressive.

PARIS: I think that says more about how invested people are in certainty than it does about me.

Pitchfork: Talk about the production. A lot of people have been writing about how the sound is much more polished than you’d expect from a debut single from an independent artist. Are you able to disclose how much it cost to produce?

PARIS: People get really focused on money when they’re trying to figure out who’s behind something.

The sound is polished because I care about clarity. If you’re going to say something uncomfortable, it helps if people can actually hear it. Noise can be a shield, and I didn’t want one. I wanted it clean enough that there’s nowhere to hide inside the mix.

As for cost—numbers give people the wrong idea. They make it seem like access explains intent, like if you can trace the funding you can solve the song. Most of what went into it wasn’t money anyway. It was time, favors, people who knew what they were doing and didn’t ask a lot of questions about why.

Independent doesn’t have to mean sloppy. Sometimes it just means you don’t put your receipts on display so everyone can decide what you’re allowed to say next.

Pitchfork: But…it’s obvious you spent a fair bit of money on it. Was your family always wealthy?

PARIS: No.

People want there to be a simple explanation for how something shows up fully formed. Money, family, a patron — some invisible hand that makes it less unsettling.

I grew up around enough comfort to understand how it works, but not enough to mistake it for protection. There’s a big difference between being near wealth and being held by it. One teaches you the rules. The other teaches you you’ll be forgiven when you break them.

Pitchfork: I hear you’ve been approached by some major labels, Interscope, Geffin. Atlantic…any chance you’ll sign with one for your debut release?

PARIS: They’ve talked. People always talk when something starts making them nervous.

What’s interesting isn’t who reached out, it’s when. It wasn’t after the first single landed. It was after the second one started circulating in the places that don’t show up on charts. That’s usually when the questions shift from “how did you do this?” to “how can we help?”

I don’t think labels are evil. That’s too simple. They’re just structures that exist to make things legible and repeatable. And sometimes that’s useful. Sometimes it kills the only part that mattered.

So is there a chance? I don’t rule things out on principle. I rule them out on outcome. The moment signing means smoothing edges, explaining myself, or reassuring people who don’t need reassurance—that’s the moment it stops being a conversation and starts being containment.

I didn’t make this to be protected. I made it to be heard. If someone can offer scale without anesthesia, I’ll listen. If not, I already know how to work without permission.

Pitchfork: Tell me about the second single.

PARIS: The second one wasn’t meant to be a single at all.

It was something I wrote because there were questions people kept circling without asking directly. The kinds of conversations that happen off-record where everyone’s pretending they’re just being curious.

It’s not confrontational in the way people expect. It’s almost… patient. It keeps saying, you’re looking in the wrong place. Not aggressively. Just consistently.

Some people hear it as mysterious. Some people hear it as threatening. A lot of people hear it and don’t know why they feel exposed afterward, which is usually the interesting part for me. If a song makes you uneasy but you can’t quite explain why, that’s usually because it’s brushing up against something you’ve learned not to name out loud.

I didn’t expect it to travel the way it did. I definitely didn’t expect it to be the one people whispered about instead of blasting. But I think that makes sense. It’s a song that sits with you and waits for you to notice what you’re already thinking.

Pitchfork: You’re talking about “Don’t Ask What I Am”?

PARIS: Yeah. That’s the one people lower their voices about. Which tells you everything, really.

It’s funny—people assume it’s about identity because that’s the safest place to put it. They want it to be about labels, about confession, about me explaining myself so they can decide where I fit. That’s not what it’s doing.

“Don’t Ask What I Am” is about deflection. About how often the wrong question gets asked on purpose because the right one would be uncomfortable. It’s about curiosity that isn’t actually curious — curiosity that’s trying to protect itself.

I’m not refusing to answer because there’s a secret I’m guarding. I’m refusing because the question itself is a kind of shield. If you can get me to define myself for you, you don’t have to look at why you need the definition in the first place.

That song doesn’t say “here’s the truth.” It says, you already know enough to be uneasy.

Pitchfork: The usenet groups think that song is saying that you’re a vampire…are they wrong?

PARIS: They’re doing what people always do when they feel something real and don’t have language for it: they reach for the most available myth.

Vampires are a great container. You can pour a lot into it — desire, fear, power, exploitation, immortality, addiction — without ever having to say the boring, human words. It turns anxiety into a story you can trade on a message board at three in the morning and feel clever about.

So are they wrong? I don’t know what they mean when they say it. Half the time, people use “vampire” to mean predator. Or celebrity. Or someone who takes and doesn’t apologize. Sometimes they mean “I want you to be dangerous because it would make my life more interesting.”

I’m not interested in correcting anyone’s mythology. I don’t play games for people who want to be comforted.

What I will say is: if a song makes you feel like there’s something in the room with you, it probably means you’ve been pretending the room was empty for a long time.

Pitchfork: It feels a lot like your whole aesthetic is: here I am, paint whatever picture you want onto me…neither confirming nor denying anything. What happens when the wrong image is painted onto you, when your fans or the media or the system makes you into something you’re not?

PARIS: That already happens. Constantly. That’s not a future problem.

People don’t wait for permission to turn you into something useful to them. Fans do it because it feels intimate. Media does it because it needs a hook. Systems do it because ambiguity is harder to manage than a story with edges. None of that is new, and none of it is personal.

The mistake is thinking there’s a correct image I’m supposed to defend. The moment I start policing interpretations, I’m trapped in a reaction cycle — explaining, correcting, reassuring. That’s how you end up maintaining a version of yourself you didn’t choose just because it’s easier than letting it be wrong.

If someone paints the wrong picture onto me, I don’t rush to erase it. I watch what that picture does. Who it serves. Who it scares. Who suddenly feels comfortable because of it. That tells me more than any clarification ever could.

I’m not here to be understood correctly. I’m here to make it harder to lie comfortably.

If the system turns me into something I’m not, that says a lot about the system. If people project onto me, that says a lot about what they’re carrying.

I don’t need to correct every misreading.
Some of them are doing the work for me.

Pitchfork: What do you say to the dozens of fans out there that are finding your music and feel like it speaks to them? There’s a lot of vulnerability in a lot of your songs that people are really responding to

PARIS: I’m careful with that question, because it’s easy to turn it into something I don’t believe in.

I’m glad it resonates. I really am. Vulnerability isn’t a marketing tactic for me—it’s just what’s left when you stop armoring everything you say. If people hear themselves in that, that matters. But I don’t want to replace one kind of authority with another. I don’t want to become the voice that tells people what their feelings mean or what they should do with them.

If the music speaks to you, that’s not because I put something into you. It’s because you were already carrying it. The song just gave it a shape for a few minutes. That doesn’t make me a guide or a savior. It makes me a point of contact.

The only thing I’d say to people who feel seen by it is this: don’t outsource that recognition. Don’t hand it back to me like I’m supposed to hold onto it for you. Whatever you felt when you heard it—that’s yours. You don’t need my permission to trust it, and you don’t need me to validate it further.

I don’t want to build a following that needs me to keep feeling real. I’m interested in people realizing they already are. If the music helps crack that open, good. If it becomes a substitute for doing that work yourself, then I’ve failed in a way I don’t want to repeat.

So yeah—thank you for listening. Just don’t confuse listening with allegiance.

Find PARIS’ new EP, featuring “Consent of the Quiet” and “Don’t Ask What I Am” in your local record store.

*For bios, quick facts and other press material, go to the PARIS press kit.