Katie Stelmanis has always had a flair for the dramatic.
Since the early 2010s, the Toronto singer and producer who performs as Austra — named after the goddess of light in Latvian mythology — has developed a distinct sound of brightly-coloured electro-pop elevated by grand operatic elements. The best Austra songs are sweeping and melodramatic explorations of queer love or revolutionary politics, anchored by Stelmanis’s magnetic voice. (Call it emo-pop, or emotional dance music.)
But on Chin Up Buttercup, the first new music from Austra in more than five years, Stelmanis dials the drama up to 11.
Written in the aftermath of a life-shattering breakup — and inspired by the healing powers of Madonna’s seminal 1998 record Ray of Light — the album is a spellbinding journey into the mind of a jilted lover; a tidal wave of extravagance and feeling, soundtracked by the pulsing, buoyant rhythms of 90s Eurodance and Scandipop (Scandinavian pop).
“I’m very indulgent with my emotions,” Stelmanis tells me from her home studio in Toronto, where she’s preparing for an Austra tour. Her Toronto stop is at The Great Hall on Jan. 31
“There’s a lot of shame and humiliation about making these types of feelings and vulnerabilities public, but I gave myself permission to really lean into the drama on this record.”
“My greatest love is probably Puccini,” she adds, her face lighting up with the mention of the Italian opera legend. “That is where all my music comes from.”
If you’d like a visual metaphor for Chin Up Buttercup, look no further than its cover art, which features a striking, somewhat humorous portrait of Stelmanis, set against a vivid white background.
Nude from the shoulders up, her mouth is contorted into a pain-stricken smile. Tears stream down her face as she stares deliriously skyward. There is grief in her expression, but also astonishment — a tangled web of emotions filling the void of a broken heart.
It was early 2020, and Stelmanis was living in London. She was preparing for the release of Hirudin, an Austra album she’d worked on for years, when she was blindsided by a series of upheavals — a romantic betrayal, the arrival of the pandemic, a career suddenly derailed.
“It was a total shock,” she says, recalling the feeling of waking up in her parents’ basement, newly single, thousands of miles from the city she loved.
Hirudin was met with critical acclaim, but flew under the radar as the world retreated indoors. The 75-date world tour was abruptly cancelled.
“It felt like I had just entered this upside down reality where nothing made sense.”
Weighed down by her grief, she began journaling — letting every emotion and feeling flow onto the page.
“When you experience emotional distress like that, it feels totally unique to you,” Stelmanis says. “You feel like an alien, like nobody in the history of time has ever experienced something like this or knows how it feels to have a broken heart.”
Over time, these entries would become the source material for Chin Up Buttercup.
As her heart began to mend, Stelmanis teamed up with Toronto producer and drummer Kieran Adams, and together they started work on an album that sought to capture both the melodrama and uncontained euphoria of classic Eurodance heartbreak anthems like Alice Deejays’s “Better Off Alone” and other deep cuts she was introduced to by her new partner.
“They were raised in rural France, and had all these nostalgic tracks I hadn’t heard before,” Stelmanis recalls. “We would just blast them and dance around the apartment — it was the perfect antidote to the isolation and darkness of the lockdowns.”
“It’s a sound that’s obviously part of the zeitgeist right now,” she says, referencing recent albums by some of her peers, like fka Twigs and Romy. “I think people are really drawn to these feelings of euphoria as a way to contend with how horribly depressing the pandemic was a lot of the time.”
The result of these efforts is a cinematic odyssey through the wreckage of heartbreak, told by a bruised and desperate narrator.
“I’m so chaotic in love,” Stelmanis sings over a rubbery baseline on “Amnesia,” the album’s bittersweet opening track. From there, she stumbles her way through the various stages of grief, including anger (“Math Equation”), depression (“Siren Song,”) and bargaining: “We could be absolutely perfect / If you would just change, only a little bit,” she sings over skittering percussion on the atmospheric single “Fallen Cloud.”
But it’s on the album’s spectacular penultimate track, that our resilient protagonist moves beyond her depression and into a state of acceptance. “I see colour in the sky / It’s brighter now, than you and I,” she declares, as the song bubbles into an explosive crescendo of light. “And with caution I move slowly on / Towards the hopefulness of dawn.”
When it was released in November, Chin Up Buttercup was embraced by fans and critics, heralded as a welcome return to form after Austra’s extended absence.
But for Stelmanis, the album — her fifth and final record in her contract with Domino, the storied American indie label — also marks a critical juncture in her career, arriving at a moment when surviving as an independent artist in Canada is more difficult than ever.
“I feel like I’m at this precipice where I’m wondering if music will continue to be a viable option,” Stelmanis, now 41, admits to me. “As a woman in music, it’s really difficult to navigate a career past the age of 35, especially for those who aren’t legacy artists. Things are changing slowly, but it also feels like I’m in this unknown, strange territory.”
The situation is exacerbated by the affordability crisis in Toronto — a city with no shortage of underground music, but one that lacks the robust infrastructure and mentorship opportunities that sustain flourishing scenes in places like London or New York.
“A lot of my peers have adult jobs now and they make a lot of money,” she adds. “An artist’s life is one of precarity in this day and age, and it starts to get really difficult. It requires a lot of work and emotional gymnastics to stay positive.”
It’s a grim outlook for an artist who has been a steady presence in Toronto music for more than 15 years.
Launched by Stelmanis and her collaborators in the early 2010s, Austra quickly caught the attention of a talent scout with Domino while performing at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. After signing to the label, the project released Feel It Break, a remarkably assured debut that made an immediate splash among critics. Both the Toronto Starand New York Magazine declared it the best album of 2011.
Following the album’s success, Austra hit the road, earning a reputation as not only a great live act, but one of the only openly queer artists on the touring circuit.
“Being out and open about it so early on meant that I immediately connected with a pretty queer fan base,” she says. “It was a lot of lesbians and a lot gay men — I know it’s cliché, but gay men love divas, and they love dance music — and I was able to tap into that culture and create a sort of emotional response through my voice.”
Over the next several years, Austra would continually refine its sound, working with different musical collaborators and creating new dynamic soundscapes.
But with Chin Up Buttercup, Austra seems to have reached a new level of sonic ambition. Working with sonic palettes pioneered by Scandinavian electronic artists like Robyn, The Knife and Kleerup, the music is dynamic and danceable, moving through vast emotional territory but never descending into gloom or sentimentality.
“I feel more creatively engaged than ever,” Stelmanis tells me.
Still, as she prepares for her upcoming tour — her first in eight long years — she can’t help but feel anxious.
“In the era of streaming, that is a long time,” she says. “It feels like an entire generation of music fans have grown up and moved on. That’s been part of the struggle making this album, learning to reconnect with people.”
But the passage of time does not seem to have dampened the enthusiasm among Austra’s fan base. Upcoming gigs in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal were quick to sell out.
“(My team) was totally blown away by the response we got when we announced the tour, and that made me realize that live performance has always been Austra’s strength.” Stelmanis says, likening her live show as a “kind of organism” that attracts an audience filled with “all sorts of weirdos — and I mean that in the best sense.”
“I’ve always made music that speaks to the margins,” she muses. “And I’m so curious to see how audiences react to these new songs — what makes people dance and what makes people cry. Those responses to me are so valuable to me.”
This article appeared in the 2026 Feb/Mar issue.