By Katie Li

October 17th 2025

Even in the smallest details, Ms* Gloom’s world is built on contrasts. The first image I catch of her is solely focused on her jacket: a blazer-trench hybrid with notes of something vaguely militaristic, neatly finished by a golden brooch. It’s chic, almost formal—yet as my eyes adjust to the full picture, I’m introduced to something flowier and undeniably more casual: capri-length bottoms I can best describe as a massively understated harem pant variant. This polarity shows up everywhere; her song “Something to Hold Onto” lives in two, both a softer, fragile form and a harder, more jagged one. Even Joon Gloom, the now-dead alias she initially recorded under, held that tension close: joon, a Farsi term of endearment she tells me she grew up with and I’ve since adopted, was forever bound to gloom, defined by Oxford as, one, “partial or total darkness” or, two, “a state of despondency.”

Yet, the result is something harmonious: equal parts tender, equal parts haunting. If her instrumental is abrasive, nearing industrial, it’s immediately rectified by the soft, floaty timbre of her voice. It’s “5StarEpiphany” that’s most emblematic of this phenomena—where, if you’re informed only by the dark drum programming and atmospheric pads, you’re primed to expect the disembodied drawl of Salem’s Jack Donoghue instead of Gloom’s tempering one. While that friction is clearest on that track’s greater body Ballads for Da Bizness (2024), an album that leans witchhouse and has once been described by my friends as “ketamine music in the best way possible”—the truest constant throughout her discography is that it never stays constant. Before this, she was releasing music under the name ava*, with the 2019 EP Blush as her most striking statement: ambient at its core, vocally-barren, and described in its notes as “an experience of feminine interiority… a vivid return of the repressed.”

Now, Ms* Gloom’s ambitions lie somewhere else entirely: calling her current sound electro trance. And while the subgenre already exists, its documentation is scarce—limited to whispers on a few Reddit threads, unofficial 7-hr Youtube mixes, and a single Canadian label’s wiki page that defines it vaguely as a bassline-driven progressive trance. With so few strict genre constraints, both a rarity and a privilege in today’s genre boundary-obsessed musical climate, she has the freedom to shape its identity and teases it to be “more high energy,” dancefloor-ready, and kinetic—a sharp contrast to her past ambient and witchhouse work.

Coco Manifesto: 

Both surprisingly and impressively, she’s been able to avoid classic four-to-the-floor drum  patterns until Coco Manifesto. It’s this rhythmic kick pulse that defines the trance genre, essential to placing listeners into a hypnotic trance as its title suggests. Perhaps even its lyrics are a self-aware allusion, self-referential to this previously absent dancey quality: “Only wanna dance for you, Call me when you're for sure, Go go hardcore, I'll do my lil dance for you.” Still, there’s a distinct melancholic quality that refuses to discriminate based on words alone; she repeats the sentiment nearly a dozen times in longing and it’s, maybe, the saddest dance ever.

 Jinx:

If I had to pick favorites, this would have to take it. It opens with a phone ringing, somehow conjuring nostalgia for a ringtone I’ve likely never heard before. And while this song is notably more upbeat with its introduction of sixteenth-note hi-hats, don’t let it fool you. This short 9-second phone call intro alters the entire atmosphere of the song with its unsettling caller, a robotic voice we can speculate may be one of her familiar collaborators, Mr. Gloom: “Joon Gloom, please come back. You do not belong inside.” And when you connect that to the song’s following lyricism—which extends the themes of performing for someone or something introduced by Coco Manifesto—it’s… extra ominous. Save our girl.

Something to Hold Onto:

As aforementioned, you’re gonna have to pick one of two versions, harder or softer; there is no in-between. Its harder version introduces itself with a booming bass reminiscent of an obnoxiously loud car engine starting up, before settling and devolving into, perhaps, her hardest beat thus far. Something to Hold Onto - Softer strips that bass back and—while its hook is lyrically the same as its counterpart—pulls her voice back into the spotlight. In each, she references three people with no obvious connections (footballer Lionel Messi, Effy from Skins UK, and frequent Drain Gang collaborator Uli K), which she tells us “honestly just came to [her].” Although the Messi line specifically comes from Ballin Like Messi, an AdamnKilla deep cut from the peak Cloud rap days.

Joker:

Joker feels like Ms* Gloom at her most digestible; it’s a pop masterpiece at its chorus, a bouncy synth trance beat at its breakdown, and pure dark synthwave cinema at its final drop. And to capture its essence fully, I’ll leave it to the Youtube comments to say what I can’t (or shouldn’t…). 

• “i need to go to rehab, i'm addicted to this”

• “It feels like divine intervention.”

• “every morning I listen to auramax before work.”

• "this makes me wanna live”

• “Hit from 2070, it’s so crzy I like it”

Still, her evolution into electro trance should not be taken as a severance of her earliest work’s sonic influences completely. While she admits she’s “thinking of genre constantly,” she’s equally quick to insist she’d never make music if it had to serve a singular mission statement or purpose. Just this week, she released “Protected (Ms* Gloom Remix)”, yet another collaboration with Year0001’s Woesum; it moves slower, cloaked in reverb, and opens with a church organ that immediately reanimates the gothic theatrics of Crystal Castles (II). And despite feeling partially like an effortless continuation of Ballads for Da Bizness—replete with the an untouched “harder” Mr. Gloom adlib as found in “5StarEpiphany”—it also features an electro trance euphoric drop post-2 minute mark. In other words, it’s a reminder that with Ms* Gloom, the evolutions are less linear than a restless oscillation—no single genre tag will ever be enough and it shouldn’t need to be.

If Ms* Gloom’s music flirts with genre boundaries, her listening habits shatter it entirely—her childhood soundtracks and DJ mixes alike mapping out her eclecticism at its wildest. Her first concert? The White Stripes. And just two months later, she’s at Hillary Duff. It’s the duality of girl. Growing up in Southern California’s Orange County (shoutout OC! I’ll claim you this once…), Ms* Gloom—known then as just Ava—grew up with the holy grail of older sisters, who would burn mixtapes for their station wagon stuffed with New Order’s “Age of Consent,” Bloc Party’s “Banquet,” and Blonde Redhead’s “Elephant Woman.” She’d listen to Madonna’s Confessions on the Dancefloor overnight and wake up with it still on: manifesting dreams of her first crush and, accidentally, the abilities of being a future popstar. These days, her socials swing frenetically from Persian ballads to Norwegian electronic rarities, jazz scats to activist folk songs. And if its name is any indication, her mix “i <3 my musik taste and thats all i know for sure” illustrates it best: an hourlong mix of Ms* Gloom’s repertoire featuring No Hands-era Waka Flocka Flame, Italian eurodance banger “Eins Zwei Polizei,” and Belgian House Producer Pegassi.

Though Ms* Gloom is a self-proclaimed perfectionist—interrupt a recording session and you’ll quickly meet Ava Gloom—she’s hardly short on material. In the pipeline are countless possibilities: perhaps more electro-trance experiments, another Woesum flip, or another collaboration with Varg2™. She’s also teased a mixtape of older unreleased tracks, tentatively titled the 949 Mixtape in homage to her Orange County roots, and, just before our conversation, had wrapped up a new track aptly called “Sing It for the Show.” Whether it lands for the club or the cathedral, Ms* Gloom’s next chapter promises to be anything but predictable.

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Read my full conversation with Ms* Gloom below.

So we're out here in K-Town, but you're based in LA. Did you grow up here?

I'm not from LA. I'm from Orange County.

The 949?

Yes, that was gonna be the name of my mixtape. 949 Forever, but... I don't know, I'm not so sure about it.

How has growing up there influenced my music?

Well... honestly, not that much. It's so devoid of culture in a lot of ways. For me, at least, where I was from. It kind of forced me to look for stuff elsewhere. I moved to New York pretty soon after high school, and then moved to Berlin after that. And then came here. I don't know. It was a lot of internet sleuthing in my own time.

Yeah, I get that. I feel like I've noticed a theme with a lot of the artists I've been talking to. When they grow up somewhere that's not very inspiring, it is inspiring in a whole new way because you have to look elsewhere and, with that, you sometimes get pushed towards the internet. Do you think LA is your final destination?

No. I say that, but then every day I wake up and I'm like, “wow, I love it here!” I always thought I'd move back to New York, but I'm not going to go back there broke or anything. I can't do that.

Have you noticed a difference in the scenes, whether performing and meeting other musicians in each different city?

To be honest, I don't really go out that much. I really want to, but I have a hard time getting myself out the door. So I don't think I know that much about the different scenes. How are they different though? I don't know. I'll have to get back to you on that, honestly. I'm not so deep in it right now. I'm home all the time. I feel like every time I'm in New York I'm just scrambling to see old friends. Having intimate gatherings with them. Then I'm always like, fuck, I didn't dance. I'm gonna be there in a week. I better hit the dance floor.

Have you performed in New York?

No, never. But, I feel like that's way less scary than LA. I would be way more down to do it there. LA is terrifying. I feel like I've said no to literally everything.

You've DJ'd shows, but have you been playing your own music live?

A year ago, I played two songs with a thing I did with Varg. I went to Europe and played two shows there. Stuff from my EP. I think that's it. I think three shows total of singing.

Is that something you want to do more?

Yeah, I'm not very brave with that. That shit is the scariest thing to me. I can't even think about it. Someone will push me on stage and I'll do it.

You can do it when we start throwing events. We'll get you up there. We'll force you next to me.

(Laughs) Yeah. DJing is more chill though.

Do you have any crazy show experiences? Either from performing or from attending them around yourself?

I saw Aphex Twin play in 2016 for the first time since God knows when... It was at this festival in Houston and it was fucking insane and all my friends went home. Except one other friend. It was pouring rain. It was truly one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. I’ve had a lot of amazing and blessed show experiences that I've seen of other people. For me, I honestly completely black out if I'm on the other side.Yeah, I don't remember anything.

You mentioned Aphex Twin, you’ve posted to Persian music, you mix darkwave. What music would you say made you? What did you listen to growing up?

Oh, man. I was thinking about this this morning, actually. I have two older siblings. They're in their 40s and my older sister kind of half-raised my little sister and I. And she made this CD for us. We played it in the station wagon. There was a CD player thing that you put in the trunk, and we had only that CD. I don't even know if my parents liked the music, but she made this playlist for us.

It had Banquet by Bloc Party, Elephant Woman by Blonde Redhead, Age of Consent by New Order. Then this amazing French singer, which my sister and I were recently like, “what the fuck was that song?”

You didn't figure it out?

No, we finally figured it out. I literally was typing in do-do-do-do, into ChatGPT and she found it! Anyways, I would say that it's like a perfect combination of everything that shaped me. Because I was so little, I didn't even know what they were saying, but I was singing along phonetically.

And then, also, the White Stripes was my first concert in 2003. And then I saw Hilary Duff two months later. I was loving it! One more that really influenced me was Confessions on a Dance Floor by Madonna. When it first came out—I must have been, like, ten— I would listen to it on my headphones every night. Like, seriously, every night before I went to bed, and I would wake up with it still on. So my ears probably got messed up, pretty fucked, but I was dreaming of my one crush, and it was great. Those are my earliest memories.

Do you still have the CD that your sister made?

No, I wish. I think it's long gone, unfortunately.

With your own music, I personally hear echoes of Elusin, Pearly Drops, Salem. How would you describe your music genre-wise in a few sentences? Or, would you say you don't think about genre as much and prefer to make whatever you want?

Honestly, I am thinking of genre constantly. Because I love so many different types of music, I'm constantly trying to pull from certain things. But I'm never like, “oh, I want to make one song like this,” or anything. And it always turns out different anyways.

But, I would say electro-trance. At least, the newer stuff. Ballads for da bizness was really kinda more witch house-y. There’s way less of that in the newer stuff. It's more eurodance, trying to put more beats in there, more high energy.

Do you feel like when you're making music, you have a certain vision that you want it to soundtrack? A certain feeling or scene you're trying to evoke?

Sometimes. It takes a lot for me to focus, honestly. If I'm making a song, I'm so in the zone. And if someone interrupts me, I'm gonna, like, kill them (laughs). I get so mean! I'm already having tunnel vision. But, no, there's not usually a purpose beforehand.

It's just whatever you feel in the moment?

Yeah, for real. If it wasn't like that, I wouldn't make music.

Processwise, do you try to record it all in one go?

For vocal tracking, yeah. But then I go ham later on. I'm, like, comping the shit out of it. I'm a perfectionist with that. But I do wanna be better about just letting it fly, being less uptight about it. It takes some of the fun away, honestly.

I did that today. I was done with this song yesterday. And then I was, like, “hmm, never mind!” And this morning, I changed the vocals. It's not ready yet but it’s called “Sing It For The Show.” I wasn't sure if it was gonna be released or not.

I’m excited to hopefully hear it soon! Do you feel better about the song today?

Yes. I was, like, “you know? This is actually kind of dope.” I have a hard time letting go of things, for sure.

They always come back! In “Something to Hold Onto” and a few of your other songs, you reference different people throughout, not even just artists or people with obvious connections. Messi. Effy from Skins. Chet Baker. King Tut. Why do you reference them?

Effy, love of my life. I mean, I'd be down to hang out with them. With King Tut, in his casket or whatever, where it's hot. It honestly came to me so quick. There's another song that I referenced by Killavesi and Adamn Killa, where he says, “ballin' like I'm Messi,” and that's a reference to that song.

Random, but do you have a favorite animal?

At one point, my Instagram was all cats I would find.

Was it on the Ms* Gloom Instagram?

Yeah. I think I probably took them down. I archived so much shit. Maybe I'll undo it, bring it back. I’m always like—should I, do the thing everyone does, like, delete everything on there?

Don't do it! We gotta see the evolution, you know?

The history. The improvement, you’re right.

Last question. You’ve teased the new song you were working on today, but—what's next for Ms* Gloom?

A lot of mystery, honey. A lot of mystery. (Laughs.) There's a lot. I'll be releasing a lot of songs in a few months.

Is it an album or run of singles?

It's a mixtape.

Oh yes, the 949 one!

Yes, I'm excited about it, because it's, like, shit—I almost didn't release it, and someone was like, “if you don't release them now, you never will, and you'll just keep making new stuff.” So that's why I'm calling it a mixtape, because it's old stuff. But they're really special to me, so I hope you guys like it!