MOTHICA

The stage name Mothica belongs to singer McKenzie Ellis, a New York-based creator whose darkly textured brand of indie electronic pop she has labeled “gloom pop.” Although she began releasing music in 2014, broad attention arrived in 2020 once the track “Vices,” drawn from her debut album Blue Hour, spread rapidly online; her sophomore effort, Nocturnal, followed two years afterward.

Ellis entered the world in Oklahoma in 1995 and first experimented with music during her teenage years by playing guitar and uploading cover songs. After enduring a stretch of depression that included a suicide attempt, she turned to songwriting as a means of personal expression. Relocating to New York City further shaped her approach once she embraced electronic production techniques and began capturing her own material for online distribution. Her initial EP, Mythic, surfaced in 2015, followed by Heavy Heart in 2017 and Ashes in 2018.

In June 2020 a social-media clip of Ellis listening to her own recordings, among them “Vices,” circulated widely and propelled the song onto the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart at No. 50 while it also topped multiple streaming rankings. Capitalizing on that momentum, she issued Blue Hour that August; the album, which features “Vices,” confronts themes of depression, self-harm, and substance abuse. Another streaming success, “Buzzkill,” appeared on her 2021 EP Forever Fifteen, and in 2022 she unveiled her second full-length project, Nocturnal.