A ghost in velvet’s guide to the apocalypse.
The Ukrainian-born, New Zealand-based dark pop architect, VÏKÆ, transforms personal and global apocalypse into theatre, where fragility meets ferocity.
Her debut anthology, DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE, out November 21, is a maximalist sanctuary for chaos, a six-year chronicle of halted eras and creative rebirths.
Singing in Ukrainian, Russian, and English, VÏKÆ weaves ancestral echoes with electric truths, building something gorgeous from the wreckage of multiple timelines.
In this interview, the ghost in crimson velvet discusses wartime glamour, dance-floor catharsis, and designing a liminal kingdom where every emotion can burn brilliantly at once.
Happy: What’d you get up to today?
VÏKÆ: Hey! I went to work today, I work at Spectrum Care where we use music and creative technologies to teach people with disabilities and who are neurodivergent in these skills, at Spectrum Care (Media Lab/Easy Beats).
We were in the studio today where I facilitated a vocal session. It was super productive – I love my job. It’s so truly rewarding.
Happy: Tell us a little about where you’re from, and what you love about it!
VÏKÆ: Well, technically I’m from Kyiv (Ukraine) but I grew up and currently live in Auckland.
So I suppose it’s only fitting I talk about both? I love that Kyiv has such a rich history and there’s something deeply moving about Ukrainian folklore and traditional Ukrainian folk music.
It’s my heritage… it’s who I am. I love that New Zealand feels like home to me. It’s not like a specific city that is necessarily home, as I’ve lived in multiple places, but it’s something about the land.
When you touch down on the tarmac after being overseas, the first thing you notice is the lush green rolling hills and landscapes, and it’s just that feeling of ‘aaah. home’. It’s truly magnificent.
Happy: You describe yourself as “a ghost draped in crimson crushed velvet” and your music as a sanctuary for chaos. How does this visual and emotional identity translate directly into the sound and themes of DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE?
VÏKÆ: Such a good question. When I’m talking about “a ghost draped in crimson crushed velvet” I mean it philosophically and quite literally: when I was thinking about what world I could see this era of my artistry live in, I thought femme fatale era, sexy, dangerous, elegant, iconic.
I thought about low light flood lights and dimly lit streets and I pictured what it would be like to live within that visual world… it’s Film Noir really. I’ve always been drawn to it.
I found it fitting that many of these film noir films were made during or immediately following World War II and captured the anxieties of the era.
I tried to recreate that aesthetically as much as possible and found the correlation between WWII and now… uncanny and dystopian to say the least “history repeating, my love is bleeding out, paradise deceiving falling through frozen ground” – ‘ANGRY GIRL’.
Philosophically? I’m talking about the version of myself that lies in between the space of softness and spectacle.
I’m talking about someone who, despite her fragility, is this soft and haunted girl but also a theatrical diva who refuses to dim her light. DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE is built from that cross over space.
It has become a liminal kingdom where grief, rage, humour, delusion, heartbreak, limerence and rebirth can all happen simultaneously all at once.
It’s very Hugh Everett coded where multiple emotional timelines are happening at once and all versions of me are existing simultaneously inside the same universe.
Therefore, the question begs, do we ALL drink from the same poisoned chalice…? I believe that sonically – the record carries that energy.
The influences for this record are incredibly broad so it’s hard to pinpoint one place where the influence comes from.
Emotionally, the album became a sanctuary for every messy, unhinged part of myself I used to hide. Every era that refused to die. Each track lives inside its own apocalypse: romantic doomsday, spiritual doomsday, technological doomsday, emotional doomsday.
But it’s not a bleak world at all. It has become a reclamation and me saying that “if everything burns, I’ll build something gorgeous from the ashes.” So really it is as if the visual identity and the sound are the same creature: theatrical, dangerous, vulnerable, maximalist and a little unhinged.
Best described as a ghost dressed in velvet teaching everyone how to survive their own chaos.
Happy: You sing in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. How do you decide which language a particular song or truth demands, especially on a multi-lingual track like “БІЖІТЬ, ВИХОДЬТЕ”?
VÏKÆ: My lyrics have always been meant to cut deep… spiritually, philosophically, or straight from the gut.
So when I’m choosing a language, it’s really about what emotional truth the song is asking for.
Some things land differently in Ukrainian, some things demand the harshness or blunt honesty of Russian and some things only make sense in English.
It’s instinctual more than anything. With “БІЖІТЬ, ВИХОДЬТЕ (you have a fetish for the apocalypse)”, the decision was clear: the song needed to stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine.
Even while a war is raging, life has to continue — people still go to work, buy groceries, try to see friends. And then at night, air raid sirens mix with the sounds of drones and gunfire.
It’s terrifying, but it’s reality. My late babushka used to put on lipstick just to walk to the mailbox. Not out of vanity but because her wartime trauma taught her to look her best every time she stepped outside, just in case it was the last time. That spirit of resilience wrapped in glamour lives inside the song.
So the language isn’t just a stylistic choice. It’s about honouring the truth of the story, the culture, and the people it’s speaking to.
Happy: How do the three new Deluxe tracks reframe the story of the anthology?
VÏKÆ: The three new tracks act like alternate endings for the Anthology. Almost like bonus chapters where you get to see the fallout from everything that happened after the fact.
The original record was about surviving chaos whereas the deluxe tracks explore what happens after survival when the dust settles and you’re suddenly left with clarity… or consequences… or often both at the same time.
One track leans into the importance of music and dance creating connection and community, one track leans more into a political edge, and another track is a remake of a previous track I released a few years ago called ANGRY GIRL.
Why the remake? Firstly, at live shows this song ALWAYS pops off… secondly? I’m still angry *laughs* just grown and a little wiser now. I wanted to update the production and I felt like that song deserved a new life.
Happy: Why does the album end with the dance-floor catharsis of ‘FREQUENCY’?
VÏKÆ: I’m soooo glad you asked this, because there’s a very deliberate reason the album ends with ‘FREQUENCY.’ (or rather – the deluxe starts with FREQUENCY) One word: connection.
For me, that track is the moment where everything in the DOOMSDAY universe cracks open and lets the light in.
It’s about the way I learnt to connect with my community; the people who move through the world in colour, who feel things intensely, who find freedom in the beat.
The weirdos, the dreamers, the ones who see the kaleidoscope when everyone else sees black and white (I hope this is all syncing up to the visuals now!) And I’m not saying that in a hippie-dippie way. I mean it literally.
Dance floors save people. Live music saves people. Humans are built to move together, to connect, to love, to sync up, to feel something bigger than themselves.
The first deluxe track being a dance track felt like the truest resolution: after all the chaos, after all the emotional wreckage, there’s still joy. There’s still a community. There’s still that moment where the bass hits and suddenly you’re not alone. ‘FREQUENCY’ is the healing.
The release. The reminder that even in the apocalypse, we dance. In fact, I actually ‘won’ a studio session with Dick Johnson after George FM ran an auction for mental health.
It was too good to keep in the vault and what better time to release a steamy house banger than right as we get into festy season in the southern hemisphere.
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Happy: How did your collaboration with Abigail Knudson shape the album’s sound?
VÏKÆ: Abby and I have been working together for years, and that kind of long-term partnership only works when you genuinely love the same sonic universe even if you approach it differently, and if you have a lot of mutual love and respect for one another.
I treasure our relationship deeply. We’re both drawn to sounds that are dark, theatrical, humorous, sexy, a little dangerous and all the sonic colours that make up the DOOMSDAY palette.
Once I realised where I needed to take this record, I knew the whole project needed a unified sonic backbone. Abby understood that immediately and having been someone I’ve worked with for so many years, it just made sense.
She didn’t define the world per se but she helped me refine it. She knows how to take the ideas I’ve already mapped out and elevate them without ever making them feel foreign to who I am artistically.
So her role was integral to helping me express the version of me that I struggle to share. We meet in the middle creatively, and that space is where DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE really came to life. (Except FREQUENCY, which is off in its own sparkly dance-floor universe for all the reasons we talked about.)
Happy: How integral were Chontalle Musson’s visuals to the album’s world?
VÏKÆ: Very much so. Although some of the visuals for this era were done by me, I knew that my content needed to elevate to the same level that my music now has (I have always been a DIY girlie-pop and there’s no harm in continuing to do so!) but without these visuals, the sonic world of DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE wouldn’t make sense either.
The whole post-war era dystopia was crucial to helping the overall narrative. I’ve worked with Chontalle before for some years now and I love her work.
She’s passionate about what she does and she gets the job done efficiently and with exceptional attention to detail. She’s bloody funny too and it’s always good to have a laugh on set.
Happy: After this deluxe edition, what’s coming up next for VÏKÆ?
VÏKÆ: I’m SOO!! excited about what’s coming next for VIKAE. I don’t want to give too much away yet, but I’m sitting on some of the best music I’ve ever made and the next couple of years are going to be really full on in the best possible way.
There are definitely shows on the horizon. I’m planning to bring this world to the stage in a much bigger and more immersive way. Live performance is such a huge part of who I am as an artist, so expanding that side of things feels really natural.
That said, I have in the last few years been diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (amongst other co-morbidities) and that’s forced me to rethink the type of performance my body can sustain.
It took me a minute to accept that shift and I had to take some time to come to terms with what it all means, but honestly? I just have to keep reminding myself that not being able to do sets in heels with intense choreography doesn’t make me any less of an artist.
It’s just a new way of performing, not a lesser one. But we’ve all got that little voice in our head that needs to, frankly, shut tf up. I have collaborations brewing, some international conversations starting to spark and this new creative world that I cannot wait to keep diving further into.
DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE is the beginning of something, not the end. All I can say is: the next chapter is louder, braver, and more VIKAE than ever. DOOMSDAY COLLECTIVE was the prequel that I needed to tell and it will be really interesting if anybody can spot story-line cross overs.
Happy: Lastly, what makes you happy? :-)
VÏKÆ: The smell of fresh rain, grass between my toes, my hands in the sand, my family, my fur-babies, my friends, good food, sweets, the colour of the clouds just before a thunder storm, squishmallows and plushies, super sunny cold days, the smell of fresh strawberries, the dew droplets on the leaves and grass when the first frozen morning in autumn starts to defrost, the smell of horses, the wind that rattles the roof cladding but you’re cozy inside wearing your favourite PJs and have just done all your skin care, and of course: music, art, painting, dancing, writing songs and poetry, spinning in circles and day dreaming.
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