Some fruit trees take four years to bear their first fruit—whether it’s due to insufficient sunlight, incorrect watering, root constraint, a tree takes time to mature. One could liken Clara Kimera’s trajectory to a tree that has been steadily rooting. Earlier this year, the artist debuted her first project outside of the Parisian electronic duo Agar Agar. With a decade in the music industry under her belt, she’s exploded back on the scene with two EPs and a handful of singles in a new, raw direction. Drawing inspiration from early internet culture, tarot, creepypasta stories and the sincerity of the jester, enter Clara’s world of mischief where anything goes. 

The first song, “King Jester,” off of Clara Kimera’s solo EP, Dial 8,  closes with a sample from an early 1996 Youtube documentary Dirty Girls:

By Julia Smith

November 6th 2025

It’s a sample from a documentary that appears through Clara Kimera’s EP Dial 8, released earlier this year. This interpolated sampling lends a voice of sincerity that only adolescence can replicate: of blindly trying to find oneself in a world fraught with those who seem to already carry an opinion. The documentary, an early Youtube cult classic, centers on a group of 13-year-old Los Angeles-native riot grrrls—part of the 1990s underground feminist punk movement, inspired sonically by Joan Jett and Siouxsie Sioux and politically by anti-establishment ideals and challenging the then-male-dominated punk scene. A purveyor of early internet archival works, Clara Kimera’s tongue in cheek choice of sampling paired with downbeat and post-apocalyptic chords create an atmosphere that’s not unlike the feeling of pirouetting at the edge of a very, very steep cliff. These early ideas from riot grrrl permeate the EP: of plainly being true to oneself despite the world telling you that you should act and be a certain way. 

“I’m not going to look good for anyone because so why should I? It started getting clear in my mind I can be whoever I want to be, I don't have to dress for anyone else, I don’t have to look for anyone, I don’t have to do anything for anyone, I can just be myself.” 

It’s this interest in early internet culture that brought Clara Kimera and notinbed’s together for their collaboration on the 4-song EP unknown reasons, and following singles like Angel Candles. “I was just randomly digging for music two years ago, and I ended up just really, really digging this song where he [notinbed] sampled this really famous old French video about this little kid that just lost his goldfish, and the goldfish name is Mustache,” the singer laughs, “It's really, it's just so sad. This little kid is realizing what death is.” Having previously produced for industry names like The Weeknd, Ateyaba, Dosseh, Dinos and Kid Cudi, notinbed’s Youtube catalogue is a treasure trove for synth driven core-core tracks. With a signature producer tag, “Aw man, I should have been there,” notinbed is producing pieces that draw on the electronic past.

Working within this theme of synthetic nostalgia, the two have birthed post-modern apogean tracks that could be on the set-list for the post-apocalyptic nuclear winter; whether it’s a hauntingly devastating piano ballad like “my fav trees” or a witchhouse masterwork like “no one belongs here more than you,” which evoke the anarchic sing-yells of Alice Glass and Crim3s, there’s something unmistakingly dystopian. Released as a capsule EP with Berlin-based techno and art collective LIVE FROM EARTH, it features club-ready hits like Angel Candles, which the duo performed earlier this summer in France.

I was first introduced to Clara Kimera as one half of Agar Agar, a Parisian synth-pop duo that predates her solo work by nearly a decade. With synth-driven loops and melodies punctuated by Clara’s wry & jocular lyricism, their early discography was a staple for me throughout my undergraduate years. Now, two years after Agar Agar’s last album, Player Non Player and following a tumultuous legal battle with her previous record label lasting over four years, it was a period of introspection for the artist. With two albums and one EP left in her contract with the previous recording label, it was a fight to leave that left Clara creatively paralyzed. “It's just very traumatizing as well,” Clara pauses, “the fact that you don't know if you're going to be able to pursue your career or not.” King Jester took around four years to make because of this— first a first version that was more reminiscent of trap-rap.

Congratulations on all of your projects this year. It sounds incredible. How has it been to perform the new material?

It's pretty chill. There's no instruments on the set, so it's just a DJ booth and my mic, so it's been pretty chill because I'm used to playing with different instruments.

You did have a moment with the guitar.

I had a band for my solo, which is just me playing guitar with another guitar player and a drummer, and they all do voices, so we can make harmonies together, which is really, really nice. But it's just a very complicated setup, I guess, just because there's the computer and I don't know, it's just the stems and the instruments and it takes ages.

So the last concerts I had with notinbed, it was pretty smooth for me. There was barely anything to do in terms of setting up and we had fun. It was cool.

You produced a few things with notinbed this year. How did that collaboration come around?

I was just randomly digging music two years ago, and I ended up just really, really digging that song where he sampled this really famous old French video about this little kid that just lost his goldfish, and the goldfish name is Mustache, and the kid is so sad and it’s devastating.  He's filming the aquarium, and he's like, ‘Mustache is dead. He's going to Goldfish Paradise.’ And this video is soul crushing, but so funny, but really, really devastating, and I love this video so much. It's really, it's just so sad. This little kid is realizing what death is.

And so he sampled this video, so I was just randomly listening to music and it struck me, and it was like, who sampled this? Who sampled Mustache? It was with ambient songs. It was so sad. And I was like, this is genius. This is so good. So I think I just messaged him on Insta and I was like, ‘Hey, I love Mustache.’ I was like, this is so out there. And so we just collaborated really quickly. It was just very intuitive, the two of us working on songs together. 

Where did you record your latest project?

I mostly did everything in Paris, and in LA actually. But, I've been going to LA every year since I was 18. I met these girls back then. They were my besties and I was living at their place. They had an art gallery in Highland Park, but it was my first time there. I was so fascinated by LA. I loved it so much. And then my best friend, who's French, got married there and is living there. So I go once a year at least for a couple of months, and I love it there. It's kind of my second house. I don't have my license though, so I'm being passively driven by people.

It's definitely special. If I stay there for too long, my brain kind of explodes, but at the same time,. It's just so different from everything I've ever seen or grew up with. It is just very touching to me. Probably the fact that it's just so spacious and European cities tend to be so tiny, so restrictive, so narrow, and this space, this amount of landscape, and it makes me want to breathe really fresh air. Just the whole aesthetic, I guess it really influenced my music and just me as a whole.

Right, a lot of your songs are in English, and you've continued that on this latest record.

I lived in Wisconsin when I was in high school. I was doing an exchange program, so you don't know where you can end up. And I ended up in freaking cheesy Wisconsin.

That’s like a lot of midwest emo. I love the chord progressions there. So DIY.

No, for sure. Also very hippy style kind of. It's really special. So the first time I wrote songs, I was over there, so I was really, really immersed in Wisconsin, in America, deep inside. 

I think it's a lot of different things, but it's like the pronunciation [of English] and also just the fact that I just think it sounds better, than the French language. It's just aesthetically speaking and just also it just makes the words, I don't know. 

There's this whole, for me as a French person, this allure of just, the sounds that the words have, and it is just so different from the French. The French is so raw, so it's very ‘rrrrr’, and also French is such a… I don't know, man. I think it can be so cringe to be a poet. I feel like it's so snobbish and it's a doomed artist vibe. And so we put so much pressure on it that once you just want to talk about something so casual, just so trivial, then there's this fine, this really, really thin line of cringe that is above your head, and it's just really hard to pass through it.

I was going to ask about your songwriting process. I remember a couple years ago, you had this song, the Prettiest Virgin that you recorded with Agar Agar, and you said in an interview previously it was one of the first songs you ever wrote. Was that pre-Wisconsin? Was that post-? From there, how do you think you've kind of evolved, in songwriting? 

I think now that top lining is a huge part of my life because I top line for other people and I write for other people sometimes, and I have a lot of different studio sessions with different people all the time. So I meet a lot of new people, and I have to be kind of efficient in a way, just always creating new material out of nothing with new people. So I think my process kind of improved in the sense that I write way faster. So I improvise and I write at the same time. I used to write in a very pop rock kind of way, meaning that you do the yogurt, you improvise, then afterwards with the syllables you have, you write the lyrics and then you sing it. And it's just very formulaic. 

I have, as I'm more at ease, there is so much more freedom in my process that I can do different types of things now. So I can just write something acapella, then produce something out of the acapella, which I barely did before, or I can just sing and write at the same time, improvise and write straight away, even though the lyrics are not the best. Obviously it's very intuitive, but it's just a different process and the lyrics are very interesting as well, just kind of a dumping intuitive kind of way of writing.

On the songs that you've released this year, the vocals have almost become the beat on, no one belongs here, or aside, that acapella keeps developing.

No one belongs… it’s kind of crazy. I think I was feeling really tired that day, and it was nighttime, and I like night sessions. But not too late, I’m kind of a grandma. I like to wake up really early and read some stuff in my bed. I am really an early person. I want my day to be very, very long, I guess. So I was really tired and I didn't really want to be there. And I don't know what came out of me, but I started screaming my lungs out because the instrumental was so good, and something happened that day. 

I don't know, I kind of went out of my body. I recorded one time, so there's no lyrics. It doesn't mean anything. It's just like this scream of the heart and that's it and we never ever touched it again afterwards. So it's really a one shot thing where I just scream so hard, but I don't even think I can do that again. I think it's really a one time experience type shit. 

That's almost analog. You only have one shot really.

Yeah, I really like that kind of concept. I love that kind of thing. I love the fact that with the voice at least, it's always different, so you have to get that one shot done. I love just to improvise and try to get it right the first time. It's kind of my challenge and my goal in life.

I feel like nowadays we're just so used to replicability or needing to be able to reproduce things or commercialize...

I was going to talk about intuition. It's something that really touches me is something that is created out of instinct and not thought of a hundred times. I am going to get so emotional in front of a piece that has been recorded, kind of DIY in a bad quality, and it's just not repetitive. I don't think art that's being so thought of and conceptual and prepared for ages is going to touch my soul as much as something that is so raw and so imperfect in its own way.

I wanted to talk about King Jester, and you spent four years writing it or something, I’m really obsessed with the guitar.

I think we did the guitar. Well, this song is like, geez, it's actually the only song. I'm talking about intuition, but this is the only song in my whole life that took me so long. I didn't want to release it, then I wanted to, then I didn't want to. Then it was just so long and because, basically, I created that song with a producer from Copenhagen five years ago, but it was just completely different. The guitar was different. Everything was just, it was more trappy. It was more like an underground rap type shit vibe. 

That must be so interesting to listen back to.

Oh my god, I really don't like it, honestly. I mean, it's not me. It's going to sound weird to me when I listen to it again. 

I had a trial and it was horrible because these people from my label, I realized they weren't paying me for ages, so I realized they were liars and just very big scammers. So I realized I was stuck because I don't know, I think I had two albums and one EP with them still, and there's no time limit, so you're kind of stuck forever if you don't deliver that. So I had to attack, so I had this trial that lasted four years, I guess. So the song, it didn't take me four years to do it, but for four years, my brain, creatively speaking, I was just so blocked. My solo project just paused all of a sudden because I didn't know if I was ever going to be free again. So I was psychologically completely shut down. I had a zipper in my mouth type shit. I couldn't creatively, I just couldn't do it. So I just stopped. I stopped working on it.

It's just very traumatizing as well, because the fact that you don't know if you're going to be able to pursue your career or not, it is just very frustrating and consuming. Just this whole thing about the industry also. I was so naive back then. I was in art school and I didn't read my contracts. I didn't have any lawyer. Nobody ever taught me to learn to know how the system works. It is just this whole industry thing where when you're so young as an artist, nobody gives you responsibilities. Obviously, they want to take money out of you, and they want you to just be some kind of a product. So it was really a grief of my innocence kind of as well.

So anyway, all of this to say that I won at some point, thank God. But it took ages and I had these songs that were vintage, that were so ancient to me. I was a different person in four years, and so I was like, ‘Oh, shit. That's definitely not me at all anymore.’ But King Jester, I really liked the melody of it. So I really, really wanted to keep it and just transform it into something that genuinely resembles my aesthetic. It took me ages, it existed in another form before, and I hate that shit. I hate that exercise. I want to create a form and just the form is sincere and it's cool, and I like the form, and I create another form after. 

I really don't like to go back to an old project, and it's not me. I had a really hard time with that song. I don't like to go to the past. It's the past.

The imagery is beautiful, though. ‘Being in the gutter,’ it's gorgeous.

Yeah, I had such a good time though, writing the lyrics and the lore of the Jester. And the sample is from this documentary called Dirty Girls, which I used to love. 

I was going to ask about that sample. It comes up a couple times in the record.

Yeah, of course. A big, big part of my influence from Dial 8 is this documentary. It's this high school guy back in the 2000s, I guess that just filmed his classmates in America in this city. I don't remember the name of it. And these girls, there's this typical Riot Grrrls back then, they were sisters and everybody else would call them the Dirty Girls.

It's very DIY. It's not really a documentary. It's like this guy filming his classmates. But it became viral, it's just so emblematic of the outcast and just the high school tribes back then. It's just so beautiful. The images, the image is amazing and just the fact that they don't care. They run this Riot Grrrl magazine, they do collages, and they're like, “we don't give a shit about what anyone thinks,” and all these mean girls are being interviewed, and they're like, “they're filthy. They're filthy. God, take a shower.”

This whole vibe is crazy. For me, the best that YouTube has ever made, Dirty Girls is one of them. It's one of those videos.

You have a really distinct sound and intentional aesthetic going into this new era. Do you know what kind of world you're looking to build or any key visual or musical inspirations? 

What I’ve been listening to right now, definitely what influenced me recently is I love Shoegaze Japanese music these days. I've been really, really listening to Plastic Tree a lot. Worldpeace DMT, bod and this guy Neo Lapse. my dead girlfriend, all of these dudes, I've been obsessed. Obsessed. Yeah, these three bands I've been really listening to. My next project is really influenced by that, for sure.

Tell me about your next project. 

So 888rks produced that song and we're going to release it in a month and I am doing this whole video clip in the Sims 4 which is kind of a horror movie that I'm directing, but it is driving me crazy. I spent so much time on it, but it's going to be amazing. And I'm really happy about all of the images that I found.

Then I am releasing a whole project very soon too, with helen island. I don't know if you heard of him. We have five songs together. We're going to release it this winter as well. And my next EP is almost ready. I just have to finish one song. It's like seven songs, and it's really inspired by Japanese Shoegaze, LA, and horror movies.

What's your favorite horror movie?

This movie called Martyr, it's French. It's really good and I love It Follows as well.

Her new EPs this year are the maxim of Clara’s artistic transformation in a new direction. Where Agar Agar was polished and almost glossy in production, Clara Kimera’s latest works are raw and driven by acoustic elements. It’s one that is characterized by sweet-but-threatening complex rhythmic structures and angular phrasing, drawing on her ability to create haunting layered melodies on “aside” and her latest single “eye2eye.” 

This latest release, co-produced with 888rks, is centered on two beings in the mise en abyme of life and death, as they are listening to the track that killed them. With eye2eye’s music video accompaniment being visualized completely within the Sims, it draws on the artist's love for the video game, apparent from her middle school blog dedicated to recreating early 2000s MTV shows like Room Raiders, Made, and Pimp my Ride in the aforementioned meta-human simulation. 

It should be horrific—there’s Silent Hill posters, demonic possession, blood splatters, and by the end, just one sole survivor—but in combination with both its addicting hook and its cutesy outfits and setting (Miffy wall art, Hello Kitty figurines, and lifesize anime girl cutouts… in other words, give them to me), we’re desensitized so that the goriness is almost an afterthought, exactly as Kimera intends. The song’s lyrics are self-referential and tell us point-blank that it’s her “last song,” but are disguised behind a layer of autotune and catchiness just as the Sims' deaths are by its eyecatching aesthetics. It’s a synthetic limbo, an elegy to the near humane experiences the Sims take on. An ecstatic death of sorts, “I immediately thought of the Sims when I wrote this song, because it deals with life and death in a light, almost distant way as if nothing truly mattered. The game allows me to portray death through a kind of filter, without it feeling too brutal or tragic,” the artist notes. “A Sims is a virtual being entirely controlled by the player, with no free will of their own, just like the characters in the song.” 

It’s this exploration of metamodernism that makes Clara Kimera singular, with consideration to the internet and its hyperreal perspectives of the parasocial and virtual reality. With a collaboration project with helen island soon as well as a new solo EP—inspired by Japanese shoegaze, Los Angeles, and horror movies—on the way, these four long years in musical hibernation have thawed over for the artist and we’re excited to see what blooms as the frost fades. 

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Read my full conversation with Clara Kimera below.