Chaos just works for some people. Prado converts manic energy into magic. The Vancouver-born and Los Angeles-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer will turn on a dime from sweet to sadistic before doubling back all over again. (If Lana Del Rey, Gwen Stefani, and Lil Uzi Vert got high together in a recording studio, it might sound something like her)

On her 2021 debut EP for tmwrk records, she flips genre upside down once and for all with a big smirk.

“I’m a really chaotic person in my regular life,” exclaims Prado. “It definitely comes through in the music.  I don’t know what I’m going to do until I start. Even then, it always makes me go, ‘What the fuck?’ That’s how I know it’s working!”

What she describes as “a hella fun upbringing” turned her into “a fucking wildcard.” Of Indigenous Métis descent, her mom hailed from the North End of Winnipeg. “Google ‘North End of Winnipeg’ and see what comes up,” Prado urges. Meanwhile, her dad migrated from Buenaventura, Colombia to Vancouver.

Inspired by everything from Björk and Lady Gaga to Gucci Mane, she bought a guitar in high school, learned how to produce, and posted her earliest recordings of “hella bad love songs”  to Twitter and Soundcloud. Releasing music at a prolific pace, she dropped a trio of EPs: Friction [2014], Dark One [2015], and Tru Love [2015]. Along the way, she caught the attention of the OWSLA crew and lent her pen to various artists under the moniker of AlienKanye throughout high school.

However, 2020 felt like just the moment for Prado to properly pop off as a solo artist.

“I have all of this sporadic energy, and now is the right time for it, because I know people are feeling it like I am,” she affirms. “My tracks are escapism. We all need that.”

Working with producer and trusted creative collaborator Xander Miller, she serves up one unpredictable bop after another. The first single “Stephen” slips from a high register harmony into the click-clack of an assault rifle. A robotic sample—“Bitch, I’m ladylike”—bleeds into a stern proclamation “I don’t give a fuck if you like me Stephen” as warped synths wrap around a funky bassline.

“It was like our bad bitches convention,” she recalls. “We were drinking, and I started telling my girls a story about this dude in fourth grade who slapped my leg. I was yelling like, ‘Yo, fuck Stephen! He’s such a piece of shit’. There are all of these inside jokes, but it’s our anthem.”

Airy guitar swirls around breathy rhymes above a psychedelic soundscape on “Drip.” It climaxes on a “mantra” of “White tips, black curls, pink lips, boss bitch, drip down, got rich, early morning, I am that bitch. Chase a bag, don’t chase a bitch.”

“It started off as a poem my sister wrote about black women,” she goes on. “It tells the story of my friend group and bitches like me. It’s like I’m waking up. It’s a great intro to my new era, homie.”

In the end, Prado’s chaos might just change pop music.

“When you listen to me, you should feel blissful, you should feel crazy, and you should feel hot as hell,” she leaves off. “I just want you to catch a happy vibe like you want to do something big. Start by following a bitch on Instagram,” she laughs.