Los Angeles, CA · pop

Zolita

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Cinematic sapphic pop — music videos with lore, hooks with teeth, a whole universe per single.

Zolita is the stage name of Zoë Montana Hoetzel, born in New York in 1994 to Heidi Schwarck and Holger Hoetzel, and raised in Calabasas, California. Her father, of German descent, encouraged her early musical education, and she grew up playing bluegrass and flat-pick guitar. She has a brother, Max Montana, a basketball player, and a sister, Luna, a YouTuber and ballerina; all three siblings share the middle name Montana.

She emerged in the mid-2010s when the video for her single "Explosion" went viral in 2015, the same year she released her debut EP, Immaculate Conception. The 2016 single "Holy" dealt with female sexuality, spirituality and feminism, and 2017's "Fight Like a Girl," written in response to the Trump presidential campaign, led into her second EP, Sappho, released in 2018 alongside "Come Home with Me," "New You" and "Like Heaven."

Her songs are pop-structured with dark, dramatic production, and she is best known for the narrative music videos she conceives and directs herself, often linking storylines across releases. Those videos, several of which have circulated widely online, are as central to the project as the recordings themselves.

Her debut album, Evil Angel, arrived in 2020 after singles including "Truth Tea," "Shut Up and Cry," "Oblivion" and "Bedspell," and a cover of Usher's "U Remind Me." A later trilogy of videos, "Somebody I Fucked Once," "Single in September" and "I Fucking Love You," starred Tatchi Rigsby as her love interest and drew five million views in its first week; she released the EP Falling Out / Falling In in 2023, followed by the album Queen of Hearts in 2024.

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