On June 4, 2025, at approximately 10:00 p.m., alternative-pop singer-songwriter King Princess sacrificed herself on the altar of live music. Staggering around a small stage at Brooklyn’s Market Hotel and staring into a crowd of awestruck fans, the 26-year-old singer collapsed to the ground as two women dressed in low-cut nurse’s outfits rushed to her position, declared that she had passed away, and carried her off the stage. King Princess was dead; long live King Princess.
“Well, I was poisoned,” the singer tells Billboard with a smirk nearly three weeks later. She’s sitting in the corner of Julius’, the historic gay bar in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, sipping on a Paloma and looking back on her very public “death” from earlier in the month.
While there wasn’t actually any poison in her system during the performance, the singer — born Mikaela Straus — thought she might genuinely pass out on stage; a heat wave had hit the city that day, and the inside of the venue was sweltering, thanks in no small part to the hundreds of fans crowded together in the venue.
“I always think of my fans as a producing a lot of body heat in general — it’s like Melissa McCarthy says in Bridesmaids: ‘You feel that steam heat? It’s coming from my undercarriage,’” she says. “I couldn’t believe how sweaty I was. I looked over my band at one point and my bass player’s knees were sweating. How does that even happen? Your knees?”
The reason for Straus’ apparent demise on stage was apparent — she was closing out her Market Hotel with “RIP KP,” the sultry lead single off the singer’s forthcoming third studio album Girl Violence. Throughout the racy new song, Straus croons about a lover who’s so utterly dedicated to showing her a good time that it “could destroy your life.” It’s punchy, it’s dramatic, it’s exactly what fans of King Princess want to hear from their idol.
Straus adds that she wanted the song to herald in the start of a “slutty, slutty gay summer,” which falls in line with her release pattern over the last few years. “It feels like a continuation of ‘Hit the Back,’ of ‘Pussy Is God.’ I always drop a slutty one in the mix,” she says. “Even when we wrote it, I was like, ‘Oh, I hope that this is the first single.’”
The singer adds that she doesn’t want to see her fans fall into “the trap of our addiction to sadness,” especially not in 2025. “We love to be tragic, and I am also a tragic lesbian,” she says. “But I do think that we should be sucking and f–king this summer.”
It’s an important message, especially given the actively hostile political climate the queer community is currently facing. Just during Pride Month, President Trump’s administration announced that it would shutter a section of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ youth; the Supreme Court ruled that Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors was constitutional, allowing the law to remain in place; and just a week later, the court also ruled that parents may opt their children out of LGBTQ+-focused lessons in public schools.
At the first mention of the Trump’s name, Straus sighs and grabs her drink off the bar, taking a long sip. “None of this is surprising. These people have literally been detailing this in their plans — which they weirdly deny being their plans — for years. If you read through Project 2025, a lot of this s–t is in there,” she says. “We know these people hate gays, they hate immigrants, and they don’t care about any form of equity in this country. They are hateful.”
But Straus also points to a disconcerting trend she’s noticed amongst the LGBTQ+ community, where members of different communities within the acronym begin turning on and fighting with one another. “Now we’re in-fighting,” she says, especially pointing to queer people turning against the trans community. “We’re picking each other apart because we’re fucking mad, and we’re upset.”
She continues, pointing out that the only way for the community to weather the ongoing animus being levied against it is by banding together. “There is a clear common enemy here. At the moment, it’d be amazing if, as a group, we all just decided that it’s better that we are out and proud and living in this country and dealing with what’s really important,” she says. “We don’t need to come for each other; they are literally doing that work [for us].”
Even as Pride Month comes to a close, the singer points out that community-building is not confined to a 30-day window. Resources are still in short supply for LGBTQ+ organizations around the U.S., and Straus says that if people want to find a way to stop the feelings of disillusionment that permeate our current political consciousness, then the best way to do so is to offer assistance where it’s most needed.
“Find your local LGBT center and donate clothing, help facilitate programs within the community, sign up to just be somebody who helps work on the space and organize the space,” she explains. “That’s your immediate community. And that’s the place that kids go when they need help.”
That focus on local community is vital to Straus, especially after she moved back to her hometown of Brooklyn after spending 7 years in Los Angeles. It’s odd, she points out, because while she feels that “everybody kind of wants to leave their hometown for a minute,” she felt the opposite happen while she was away. “The minute I moved back, I just felt embraced by my city and by the people here all over again,” she says. “I think I found my queer community here as an adult in a way that’s really, really beautiful. I love my girls. This is my favorite city in the world; my stinky, poopy rat city.”
The move back to New York also instigated a transition to take place in Straus’ professional life. Not only did King Princess leave Mark Ronson’s Columbia imprint Zelig Records in favor of independence, but she also began exploring the world of acting. Sharing the screen with Nicole Kidman in the second season of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers proved to be a career highlight, Straus says, and one that helped renew her creative passion.
“I feel like it up my music game. It’s an interesting form of performance, because you really can’t be embarrassed; you have to try stuff,” she explains. “You’re using your body as a tool in a way that’s really precise and on camera, and I think it just dialed me and allowed me to be more silly and more clown-like, and feel less precious.”
With Straus’ acting career is set to continue — her film debut alongside Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in Song Sung Blue is set to release this coming Christmas — and her new album Girl Violence due out on September 12 via Section1, the singer smiles as she takes another sip of her Paloma. “More art all the time,” she says. “We just need art constantly.”
