PRINCESS MELIA CAPTURES EMOTIONAL EXTREMES ON DEBUT ALBUM, GOOD NIGHTS & BAD DAYS
Rising Indigenous alt-pop artist Princess Melia steps fully into her voice with the release of her debut album Good Nights & Bad Days. Rooted in her experience living with bipolar disorder, the 8-song project captures the collision of emotional extremes – where burnout, love and isolation all coexist – documenting both the depth of the lows and the intensity of the highs in an honest, unfiltered way.
Born and raised in Whitehorse, Yukon, and now based in Toronto, Princess Melia is a proud member of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation with roots in Cree, Kaska Dena, Tahltan and Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in communities. Her sound blends contemporary alt-pop with electronic and R&B influences, grounded in raw, confessional songwriting that reflects her lived experience.
Good Nights & Bad Days is an intimate, electrifying exploration of duality – the contrast between chaos and calm, euphoria and despair. The album moves between two sonic worlds: one drenched in moody, ambient electronic textures that dive into sadness, isolation and self-reflection; the other pulsing with high-energy, club-driven records that capture love, heartbreak, reckless nights and the messy beauty of being alive.
Expanding on its central theme, the project traces the tension between losing control and fighting to regain it, offering a candid look at survival, self-sabotage, and the ongoing search for balance. It’s equal parts confession and catharsis, grounded in self-awareness without romanticizing the chaos.
Princess Melia will bring Good Nights & Bad Days to the stage this summer with performances at Dawson City Music Festival (Dawson City, YK) on July 19 and Scarborough Arts Festival (Scarborough, ON) on July 26, with additional dates to be announced.
First off, care to introduce yourself to our readers?
Hey! My name is Princess Melia, a.k.a. Melia (pronounced Meli-ah).
I’m an Indigenous pop artist originally from Whitehorse, Yukon, a small city surrounded by mountains and subarctic boreal forest. The closest “big” city is a three-day drive south!
I lived in Whitehorse for most of my life, but I’ve been based in Toronto for the last few years. Even though I’ve moved away, Yukon will always be home, and I try to head back at least twice a year, including spending about a month there every summer.
Musically, I make alternative pop that’s usually a fusion of electronic music and R&B-style vocals, and I’ve been singing since I could talk, literally. (there’s home videos of me as a toddler making up songs and singing them to my family)
Growing up in the North has shaped both my perspective and my songwriting, and a lot of my music explores the contrast between light and dark experiences. I love creating songs that balance vulnerability and energy, music that can make you cry one minute and dance the next. My goal has always been to make people feel something with my music.
Tell us a bit about your recent release.
Good Nights and Bad Days is a fusion electronic album that explores the highs and lows of my life. Half of the songs are high-energy tracks that give club vibes, while the other half are darker, more ambient songs that deal with heavier topics and emotions.
I decided to go with this theme because, first, it very much reflects my own experiences, and second, I wanted to take listeners on an emotional roller coaster, something I’m all too familiar with myself.
Even though the instrumentals can be quite different from one song to the next, my vocal style is the thread that ties everything together.
Walk us through your creative process when creating music.
I love creating and writing in the moment.
With this project, every song was created from scratch alongside my executive producer, Lottoz. We’d get into the studio with little to no plan and just create organically. Lottoz handled the main production, while I co-produced by offering instrumental suggestions and helping shape the overall direction of the mix and master.
As he built the instrumental, I’d start writing lyrics and vocal melodies. I write pretty fast, so I’d often have half a song written within 15 to 30 minutes, and we’d usually have a demo finished within a couple of hours.
This is my favourite way to create, without too much rigid structure. I love walking into a session not knowing exactly what I’m going to make and discovering it as we go. There’s something exciting about finding the song in real time.
We ended up with around 30 demos during the process and narrowed them down to the songs that I felt best represented the project.
I’m also starting to produce on my own now, and I’m really excited about some future collaborations in the works with some incredibly talented Toronto-based artists.
Now that the music is out, what does the ‘road ahead’ look like? Beyond tours and videos, what’s one ‘bucket-list’ goal you hope to achieve with this release?
A bucket-list goal I’ve had for a long time has been performing at Dawson City Music Festival, and that’s finally going to happen this summer.
It’s a festival in Yukon that has been around for nearly 50 years and has become a staple of the territory’s music community. For many Yukon artists, it’s almost like a rite of passage.
What makes it even more special is that my great-grandfather was a renowned fiddle player in the North, often referred to as “The Tahltan Fiddler,” and he performed at Dawson City Music Festival multiple times throughout his career.
Being able to perform there myself feels like a full-circle moment. I’m the only other member of my family (that I know of) who has really dedicated themselves to music professionally, so it means a lot to carry that legacy forward in my own way.
Every artist has a lightbulb moment where things just clicked. Looking back, what’s the one performance or milestone that made you realize, “Okay, this is what I was meant to do”?
I think it really clicked when I decided to move across the country to pursue music full-time.
There’s nothing quite like packing up your entire life and moving thousands of kilometres away to a city you’ve never even visited before, away from everything you’ve ever known. Once I made that leap, there was no denying how serious I was about this path.
Nothing makes you feel committed to your dreams quite like going the extra mile, or kilometre, in my case. Haha.
We love championing Canadian talent. If you were curating a “Must-Listen” playlist of emerging artists right now, who is the first person you’d add?
The first person I’d add would have to be fellow Indigenous pop artist Semiah. She has a beautiful folk-pop/Indigi-pop sound that’s incredibly powerful. I’m a huge fan of her music, and she’s an amazing singer, like, really amazing.
I also have to give a tie for first place to Zoë Starra, a Toronto-based experimental electronic artist who creates some of the coolest music I’ve heard. She brings so much to her performance musically, vocally, and on the stage.
Both Semiah and Zoë produce their own songs, which makes what they do even more impressive.
There’s nothing like the energy of a live room. Where can fans catch you on stage next, and for someone seeing you for the first time, what should they expect from a Princess Melia live experience?
My next performances will be in Yukon! I’m currently planning a release show for early July, and I’ll also be performing at Dawson City Music Festival on July 17–19.
After that, I’ll be performing at The Guild Alive with Culture Arts Festival in Scarborough, Ontario, on July 25–26, and I have a really special Toronto show in the works for August that I’m excited to share more about soon.
My live show is an emotional journey. I usually start with some of my more somber songs, work in a stripped-down acoustic section, then gradually build momentum with my lover-girl house tracks before finishing with my most energetic club songs.
I always joke that I want people to start the set crying and end it dancing.
By the end of the show, I want people jumping, singing along, feeling connected, and feeding off the energy in the room.