Her last album, To All The Dead Flowers, was a reckoning with grief, love, and release, an act of holding what had wilted just long enough to understand it. Now, she’s stepping into a darker, more embodied era. The new work is cinematic, electronic, libidinal, confessional. It lives in nightlife’s blur as seamlessly as it questions its darkness. It asks what it means to choose yourself, to come home and begin again.
In conversation with Moody, she talks about returning to New York, writing through transition, shedding the savior role, loving without possession, and learning the power of saying no just as intentionally as saying yes.
MOODY: How did you fall in love with music and poetry?
Rosalíe: My family is very musical. My mother's a singer, my grandfather plays guitar, and my uncle plays the piano. Every night growing up was like this big jam session; there was something about music that felt very personal and like it was already mine.
I didn't think I could sing. Everyone else had these really big, soulful, loud voices. It wasn't until seven years ago that I started to make my own music.
MOODY: What inspires your work?
Rosalíe: The throughline for me is creating a second skin. It’s not just music, it’s writing that has been a love of mine forever. I remember writing all the time in middle school and just always singing.
I'm a Black Indigenous trans woman and the intersection of those identities is really hard to come by publicly in terms of representation. I wasn't surrounded by other girls who look like me. I want to write about the stories that we have (love, heartbreak, joy, the messiness) and write it in a way that other people can relate to.
MOODY: Tell us about your last album, To All The Dead Flowers. Why that title?
Rosalíe: It's an allegory. I started making the record right when I was planning to move back to New York. I was in a relationship, we were poly for most of it, and had broken up a week after I paid for us to go to California together. On the last date with my ex, I had this basket filled with flowers. A month after we broke up, I was cleaning out my room and realized that I had kept the dead flowers.
The album, as a whole, goes back to my childhood. I wrote a song called ‘paper town’ about learning to accept that many places are home for me… writing about ‘small town dreams,’ loss, love, lust, and getting back to New York after spending some of my formative years in Connecticut. It is an allegory for release and grief. There's something really healing about speaking to a chapter that you're closing.
The album almost never happened. I didn’t feel like I had anything to say. Then I got back to New York and got this creative spark. Making it was intense.
Because of that exploration, I feel the most connected to my body that I ever have. The essence of me is not as confusing, I feel pretty sturdy in this era and I'm excited for what's next.
Rosalíe: Sonically it's very different, much darker, more moody, electronic. I'm a songwriter at heart, so To All The Dead Flowers is very lyrically driven, and everything I write will be, but this is different.
To All The Dead Flowers ended on a note like, ‘okay, we're going somewhere else, but we don't know where yet.’ This album, I'm writing it in a way where lyrically every song ties into the next one. It's thematic in a way that is new for me.
The first song documents me being back in New York. These songs are written more in the first person: this is me now, this is my confusion now. ‘A Silent Prayer’ is about understanding that maybe the sex, maybe the drugs, maybe the parties, maybe all of this is wrong. Maybe I am being a little selfish. Maybe I don't know what's gonna happen—but I actually love that and I deserve that.
New York is pensive and sharp… ‘In between the taxis, I bite my nails on the street… before the lights, the drugs, the sets, the clothes, it all imposes on me now.’ Maybe all of this isn't great for me, but I'm in the middle of all the movement.
Coming back here was me actually choosing something for myself for the first time holistically… I'm relearning who I am without the context of having to wear a cape.
Rosalíe: An idea of a savior. I've been a caregiver… you need to be the hero because then what, if not this? I'm so used to being with my siblings and everyone around me; now I'm physically distanced and trying to figure out my life in this beautiful, chaotic, electric space again.
MOODY: Throughout your artistry, you touch on your trans experience. What message do you want to share?
Rosalíe: It's important to build community holistically, not tokenizing. We need each other to survive. My humanity is tailored to yours and without it we lose each other.
People who think ‘it's not right to be transphobic’ but don't actively challenge that within themselves, start there.
To folks I share identities with: I love you so much. I'm grateful to be in this life and this identity. Our community is electric, colorful, creative, resilient, kind. Thank you for loving me back.
MOODY: What would you tell your younger self?
Rosalíe: You're autistic and also neurodivergent. Learn to take breaks. You don't have to work for seven hours a day, it doesn't work for your brain. Saying no isn't terrible. Reserve your yeses for when they feel most exciting. Keep trusting.
MOODY: What boundaries or lessons guide your self-love?
Rosalíe: Be intentional and honest about what my yes means—have integrity. If you really mean it, say it; if you're not sure, say you're not sure.
Be visible in my honesty, even if it's uncomfortable. Give myself space to be confused. Don't play with my time…time is precious.
A boundary of mine when meeting people: do you like Beyoncé, yes or no? Every time you mention Beyoncé, misogyny and anti-Blackness can reveal themselves. That tells me everything.
Rosalíe: Love fully and don’t dim that regardless of outcome. To not love in a way that's authentic is not being my full self.
People will not stay if they don't want to. You don't own anyone. To love someone means to create more freedom… where people can show up fully themselves as individuals and then consent to a joint journey.
Sometimes it's not about being right, it's about feeling heard. I want to be in a constant state of learning each other. If I love you now, I also have to love the idea of not knowing who you might be tomorrow. The essence is who I'm in love with.
MOODY: What gets you in the mood?
Rosalíe: I'm particular… it takes a lot. What turns me on is often non-sexual things, someone's voice, the frequency. Thighs. Eyelashes.
I'm kind of a voyeur. I love to watch, there's something intimate about watching your partner… you learn where they place their hands, the voices they make, the gestures their body goes through. I like to be a student.
I don't have ego in the bedroom.