> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emptyspaces.co.nz/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # VÏKAE is flying high on a cloud of momentum, self-built as an independent artist - URL: https://www.emptyspaces.co.nz/vikae-is-flying-high-on-a-cloud-of-momentum-self-built-as-an-independent-artist/ - Published: 2026-11-09T19:45:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-11-09T19:45:00.000Z - Author: Nick Raven - Tags: Interview Right throughout high school I took music as a subject. There were a small number of other students who stayed the course. One of them was Veronika Bell. She was a singer with a specific interest in opera. It was unlike anything I'd heard before. The first time I heard her perform something a little more contemporary was a cover of Decode by Paramore during the peak Twighlight fandom era. What a time. Fast forward and Veronika Bell is still a singer. She still draws deeply into her early opera training though her music is something from an entirely different world. It's dark, expansive and industrial all at once. She sings, raps, produces - the whole thing. Her latest EP has just debuted on Official Top 20 Aotearoa Albums chart. Quite the achievement. Well Veronika and I caught up and it was like rekindling an old flame. Music creates connection beyond time so it seems. She shed some light on her world of late - the EP,. performing with a band, the politics of war and so much more. Check it out below. ### You started out training as an opera singer. How did this shape the way you approach your voice and songwriting today? I think opera fundamentally changed the way I understand the human voice, not simply as an instrument, but as an extension of storytelling. There's something extraordinary about the sheer emotional and physical capacity of the voice, and classical training forces you to understand that relationship. You're learning how to communicate something enormous through breath, resonance, phrasing and dynamics, often without relying on amplification or production to carry you. I was also heavily involved in ballet and theatre growing up, so I've always approached music from quite a theatrical perspective. There's a certain choreography to the way I write, even when the music itself isn't particularly theatrical in the traditional sense. I'm interested in tension, release, contrast and the emotional architecture of a song. Later, studying jazz and composition expanded that vocabulary considerably. Jazz taught me to question harmonic conventions, experiment with structure and appreciate the beauty of something unexpected. I think those influences are still very apparent in my songwriting today, even if they're buried beneath layers of distortion and industrial production. I'm not particularly interested in demonstrating technical ability for the sake of it. Sometimes the most emotionally devastating thing you can do with your voice is barely use it at all. Ultimately, I think my classical background taught me how to use my voice, but my experiences as a songwriter taught me when to abandon the rules. ### Your EP WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD has charted on the Official Top 20 Aotearoa Albums. What does that recognition mean to you as an independent artist? Well, I ugly-cried and then had to lie down for approximately two hours, so I think that probably tells you everything you need to know! In all seriousness, I don't think I've quite processed it yet. The EP debuted at number 15, which is an extraordinary achievement for an artist operating independently, particularly when you consider the amount of time, money, emotional labour and sheer determination that goes into bringing a project like this into existence. I don't have a record label behind me. I don't have some enormous marketing machine or an endless supply of resources. What I do have is an incredible community of people who believe in what I'm creating, and a handful of extraordinarily talented collaborators who have helped me realise something that, for a long time, existed entirely inside my head. And this isn't necessarily an easy record. It's politically charged, emotionally confronting, multilingual and, at times, deliberately abrasive. It's not an album designed to sit comfortably in the background of someone's dinner party. Unless, of course, you're hosting a particularly apocalyptic dinner party. What makes this recognition especially meaningful is that it demonstrates there's an audience for music that challenges people. Music that isn't necessarily chasing trends or attempting to satisfy an algorithm. As an independent artist, you spend an extraordinary amount of time questioning whether the sacrifices you're making are sustainable, or even worthwhile. I also live with chronic illness and disability, which adds another layer of complexity to an already demanding profession. So to see this body of work recognised on an official national chart was an incredibly emotional moment. Not because chart positions determine artistic value, because they absolutely don't, but because it represents something tangible. People connected with the work enough to actively support it. For one glorious moment, the seemingly impossible became possible. And that means more to me than I can adequately articulate. ### The EP moves between dark brooding pop, industrial rap and sparse distorted production. How has your sound developed, and what influences have shaped that direction? I've always struggled with the idea that an artist should exist within a single, easily identifiable genre. I understand why genres exist, but I also think they can become creatively restrictive when we start treating them as rules rather than reference points. My musical background is quite eclectic. Classical music, jazz, theatre, electronic music, alternative pop and film scores have all influenced the way I think about composition. I'm fascinated by the relationship between something beautiful and something deeply uncomfortable, and how those opposing forces can coexist within a piece of music. Earlier in my career, I think I was more concerned with understanding where I fitted within the musical landscape. These days, I'm considerably less interested in fitting anywhere. *WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD* really allowed me to embrace that philosophy. Working with producer Will Henderson, we explored a much more confrontational sonic landscape, incorporating industrial textures, aggressive percussion, distorted synthesisers and moments of almost unsettling restraint. There's a tendency in contemporary pop production to fill every available space, but I've become increasingly interested in what happens when you take things away. Silence can be enormously powerful. So can an ugly sound in an otherwise beautiful arrangement. I think the record reflects my growing willingness to embrace contradiction. Something can be melodic and abrasive, deeply personal and overtly political, accessible and experimental, all at once. I don't want to make music that sounds like what people expect VÏKAE to sound like. I want to make music that sounds like whatever the story demands. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5b/32/5b326593-f15d-4829-868d-c5cdac164009/content/images/2026/11/Press-Photo-1-1.jpg) Image: Supplied ### A lot of the EP deals with war, identity, illness and political disillusionment. Did writing these songs help you make sense of what was happening around you? I actually think the opposite might be true. Writing these songs made me realise just how little sense any of it makes. There's an enormous pressure, particularly within the arts, to turn suffering into something beautiful or meaningful. To find the lesson, the silver lining or the triumphant conclusion. But sometimes things are simply devastating, unjust or completely incomprehensible, and I don't think art has an obligation to make those realities more palatable. As a Ukrainian-born artist, watching the continued destruction of my birth country has been profoundly distressing. And beyond that, there's this seemingly endless cycle of political instability, technological acceleration, environmental anxiety and the gradual normalisation of things that should horrify us. Then there's the much more intimate experience of living in a body that doesn't always cooperate with you, navigating chronic illness and trying to reconcile personal vulnerability with the expectation that you should somehow remain endlessly productive. I think all of those things contributed to a growing sense of disillusionment, and the record became somewhere to put it. Songs like *ONE X ONE* and *UR THE WORST* are explicitly confrontational, whereas *Dig Deep* and *Memories* examine much more intimate experiences of resilience, grief and the things we carry with us. What connects them is this underlying question of how we remain human in a world that can feel increasingly indifferent to humanity itself. I don't think writing the EP gave me answers. If anything, it gave me permission to ask more difficult questions. But I do think there's something profoundly comforting about recognising that your fear, anger or grief isn't an entirely isolated experience. Music has this extraordinary capacity to transform something deeply personal into something collectively understood. Perhaps that's the closest thing to an answer I've found. ### You move between English, Ukrainian and Russian in your music. How important is language to the way you express your identity and tell stories? Language is enormously important to me, particularly because my identity has never existed neatly within one culture or geographical boundary. I was born in Ukraine but grew up in New Zealand, so I've spent much of my life navigating the relationship between where I come from and where I belong. And I think there's a distinction between those two things that becomes especially apparent when you're making art. English is the language through which I communicate most of my everyday experiences, but Ukrainian carries something different. There's a sense of cultural memory, ancestry and belonging that is difficult to articulate in quite the same way. Russian is perhaps more complicated, particularly within the context of the war. But I think it's important to recognise that languages are not the exclusive property of governments or political regimes. They belong to the millions of people who speak them, whose histories and experiences are intertwined with them. I find it deeply interesting that language can simultaneously be a vehicle for connection, division, identity and resistance. In *ONE X ONE*, moving between English, Russian and Ukrainian was a deliberate artistic decision. The song deals with conflict, power and collective responsibility, and I wanted that multilingualism to exist as part of the narrative rather than simply as an aesthetic choice. There's also something fascinating about how the emotional character of a phrase changes between languages. Certain words have a weight, rhythm or cultural significance that doesn't translate perfectly, and sometimes that's precisely the point. I don't necessarily need every listener to understand every word immediately. Sometimes I want them to experience the emotion first and become curious about the meaning afterwards. For me, using these languages is also a way of refusing to simplify my identity for the sake of accessibility. I can be Ukrainian and a New Zealander. I can carry multiple linguistic and cultural influences without those things diminishing one another. I think there's something rather beautiful about that complexity. ### You've recently introduced a full band to your live shows. Has that changed how you think about your music and where you want to take your music next? Absolutely, and perhaps more significantly than I initially anticipated. For a long time, the VÏKAE live experience was built around electronic production, synthesisers and programmed elements, which made sense given the sonic landscape I was creating. But introducing a full band has completely transformed the relationship between the music and the performance. There's something inherently magical about having musicians respond to one another in real time. The songs begin to breathe differently. They develop their own personalities, and suddenly there are moments of spontaneity, tension and emotional intensity that simply cannot be replicated in a completely programmed environment. Coming from a background in classical music, jazz and live performance, I think it's also reawakened a part of my musical identity that I've been wanting to explore more deeply. I've always described my music as cinematic, but I'm increasingly interested in exploring what that means beyond electronic production. I want to incorporate more live instrumentation, orchestral arrangements, expansive dynamics and the sort of musical textures that make a piece feel almost three-dimensional. I'm fascinated by the idea of creating music that feels less like a collection of individual songs and more like an entire world you can step inside. I'm also becoming more interested in challenging conventional song structures. Not every composition needs to follow a predictable trajectory. Some of the most extraordinary pieces of music unfold almost like films, introducing themes, developing tension, completely transforming themselves and occasionally leaving you somewhere entirely different from where you began. I think introducing the band has reminded me just how much emotional depth exists in the imperfections of live performance. There's a humanity to it that I find incredibly compelling, particularly in an era where so much of what we consume is becoming increasingly automated and artificially constructed. Ultimately, I don't want to abandon the electronic elements that have helped define my sound. I want to build upon them, combining the synthetic and the organic to create something even more immersive, theatrical and emotionally ambitious. *WELCOME TO THE END OF THE WORLD* feels like the culmination of one particular chapter of my artistic development. Now I'm interested in seeing just how much further I can push the boundaries of what VÏKAE can be. After all, if we've already reached the end of the world, there's an entire universe left to create. ****Have music you’re proud of? Submit it to Empty Spaces and get featured.** [Submit your music ](https://www.emptyspaces.co.nz/submissions/)