Brooklyn, NY · pop-rock · indie pop

King Princess

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Swaggering queer pop-rock auteur — torch-song vocals, glam guitar, and arena-sized hooks about messy love, '1950' still the calling card.

King Princess is the recording name of Mikaela Straus, born in Brooklyn in December 1998 to a recording engineer father and a mother of Irish, Italian and Polish descent. She spent much of her childhood at her father's studio, Mission Sound, where she learned bass, guitar, piano and drums and picked up production techniques early, drawing on rock artists like Led Zeppelin, T. Rex and Jack White.

She turned down a label's offer to sign her at eleven, waiting until she felt she understood her sound and how she wanted to make it. After a scholarship to a Manhattan private school and a year studying at USC's Thornton School of Music, which she left early, she signed to Mark Ronson's Zelig Records, an imprint of Columbia.

Her debut single, "1950", released in February 2018 and taken from the EP Make My Bed, told a story borrowed from queer history and Patricia Highsmith's novel The Price of Salt; it reached multiple charts, went platinum, and gained wider attention after Harry Styles tweeted its lyrics. Her debut album, Cheap Queen, followed in 2019 to strong reviews.

Her music sits between pop and guitar rock, built on slow-burning melodies, layered harmony vocals and glam-inflected guitar, with lyrics that deal frankly with desire and difficult relationships. She has been openly queer throughout her career and has spoken about writing from that perspective.

She left Zelig Records before releasing the 2025 album Girl Violence through Section1, and that year also made her acting debut in the series Nine Perfect Strangers. Live, she performs with a full band and plays guitar herself.

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pop-rockindie pop