\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \n\tDuring the year and a half she spent in and out of the hospital, she took solace in the vinyl records that her schoolteacher mom brought her, along with an old turntable. \u201cSupertramp, Breakfast in America<\/em>, Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues<\/em>, Tears for Fears, Songs from the Big Chair<\/em>,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI played those records again and again and again in the hospital. I became obsessed with the feeling that I got under my fingertips.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tWhen she was better, Teilz talked her way into an internship at Stinkweeds, a woman-owned independent record store in downtown Phoenix that became her entry point to the local music scene. Noticing that there were few all-ages venues in town (\u201cIt was kind of a Footloose <\/em>situation\u201d), she took matters into her own hands and began booking a series of Friday-afternoon matinee shows for a teen audience. Local bands her age would play, and she\u2019d DJ. <\/p>\n \n\tPromoters in the region paid attention, and by 15, Teilz says, she had parlayed that into a part-time job in artist relations for Live Nation. \u201cMy job was literally to go after school, pick up a pop star from the airport: \u2018You want to go to P.F. Chang\u2019s?\u2019 I didn\u2019t even have my driver\u2019s license. I had my permit. I remember picking up Justin Bieber<\/a> from the airport, like, \u2018I hope I don\u2019t get pulled over by the cops.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe rest of high school was full of \u201cfairytale moments,\u201d as she used her connections and her god-given moxie to become an in-demand DJ. \u201cI was like, \u2018Mom and Dad, I\u2019m going to New York to DJ the afterparty for Sufjan Stevens<\/a> at Prospect Park,\u2019 and they\u2019re like, \u2018No,\u2019\u201d she recalls. (She did it anyway, a few months after her 17th birthday.) Back home, she struggled through her time at a conservative Catholic school. She got in trouble for walking out of a class preaching anti-gay dogma; she got in trouble for dyeing her hair pink. \u201cIt was this crazy juxtaposition,\u201d she says. \u201cKids were really mean to me. I just remember walking through the high school with my headphones on.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt some point, she did what many teens of that era would, and started a YouTube channel to talk about it all. \u201cI was just desperate to reach other people who were going through what I felt like I was going through,\u201d she says. Unfortunately, being a girl on the internet in the early 2010s made her a target for Hipster Runoff, the indie music blog whose irony-soaked musings came with a side<\/a> of nasty<\/a> misogyny<\/a>. \u201cIt was surreal,\u201d she says. \u201cThey started covering every move \u2014 \u2018Teilz gets hit by a car. Teilz is onstage at a Girl Talk concert. Teilz is getting bullied at high school.\u2019 It felt like this buzz of excitement, but there were also so many bullies on the internet, like, \u2018Kill yourself.\u2019 \u2018You should just do porn and fuck off.\u2019 There was a lot of comparing me to porn stars as a teenage girl. I was like, \u2018I\u2019m not even wearing anything sexual.\u2019 There was a countdown someone made for when [I turned] 18.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHer success as a DJ sometimes drew even harsher responses from people around her, like an ex who she says \u201chorribly, out of the blue, beat me up terribly, because he was jealous.\u201d But she kept going, no matter what. In the spring of 2013, when she was 19, she got a coveted spot opening<\/a> for a DJ set by Thom Yorke. \u201cAnd that\u2019s the night I met my first real love, my first partner,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \n\tThat first real love was Joaquin Phoenix<\/a>, whom she went on to date for a few years, sparking a new round of unwanted headlines<\/a> centered on their nearly 20-year age gap. \u201cSuddenly I was in every major tabloid,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019d done a little bit of press for my music project, but that didn\u2019t compare to this international scandal of \u2018Who\u2019s the Teenage DJ Dating Our Sweetheart?\u2019 It was, again, being objectified, being projected upon.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tThis time, she reacted by shutting out the world. \u201cI remember the first day the story broke, I deleted YouTube. I deleted my Tumblr. I deleted my Instagram. I deleted everything. I literally, like a scared animal, went so deep in my cave, because it was the most pure thing in the world to me \u2014 love, romance \u2014 that was being twisted in this grotesque way, and it made me completely shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNeil Krug*<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tFor the next decade or so, she moved through life more carefully. In her twenties, after that relationship ended, she debuted a line of power suits<\/a> inspired by Grace Jones, launched a popular bicoastal club night, and built a community around herself. She also became a mom for the first time, welcoming a daughter with actor Alfie Allen in 2018. Mostly, she hid in the safety of the DJ booth, an environment she compares to \u201ca moat\u201d protecting her from the hostile world of celebrity coverage. \u201cI recoiled,\u201d she says. \u201cAll of it just made me become more quiet.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWHEN SHE AND JONZE split up in 2024, Teilz reconsidered everything. \u201cI was pregnant with Blue, my youngest. My twins were a few months old. I was going through this heavy loss of my love, my partner, one of my best friends, and also the loss of this project<\/a> that we had been working on together for many years,\u201d she says. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t just a breakup. It was like all of these parts of your world are violently changing. What do you do? How do you hold it all together?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSo she turned to music, just like she had so many times before. \u201cThe only way that I could process all of the deep, deep, deep pain and heartbreak was turning to the thing that\u2019s always comforted me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was like an itching in my skin: \u2018I need to get this out. I have to metabolize this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tShe thought about Alice Coltrane<\/a>, and how she\u2019d raised four kids after becoming a widow around the same age Teilz herself was. \u201cShe went deeper into her spiritual practices,\u201d she says. \u201cShe went deeper into creation, into community.\u201d She listened to Season of Glass<\/a><\/em>, the album Yoko Ono made after John Lennon\u2019s murder. She tried to imagine a way forward.<\/p>\n \n\tAnother source of inspiration in those days was Lily Allen, a close friend (and aunt to Teilz\u2019 oldest child) who was working through a shocking breakup<\/a> of her own at the time. \u201cShe came over and played us the demo of \u2018Pussy Palace.\u2019<\/a> Oh, my God. That\u2019s a masterclass in alchemy right there.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tTeaming up with Nick Sylvester, the maestro behind new-school dancefloor classics by Channel Tres<\/a> and Yaeji<\/a>, Teilz developed a sound that tacked hard against what she was feeling. Instead of despair, she\u2019d create something impossibly chic. Instead of lashing out, she\u2019d make music that welcomed the world in a warm embrace. \u201cWe were listening to a ton of Compass Point records, a lot of early ESG,\u201d she says. \u201cWe were playing around with a lot of sounds. I wanted it to feel like what I felt as a teenager listening to Nine Inch Nails, where it just goes inside you. I wanted the production to completely enter every little cell of your body and vibrate you higher.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTeilz ended up co-writing and co-producing nine of the album\u2019s 12 tracks with Sylvester (she made the rest with her friend Jorge Elbrecht). Those are nearly the only names to be found in the credits, and she emphasizes the importance of that human touch. \u201cNot a drop of AI was used in this record,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was us, in the studio, making things with our hands.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSimilarly, she\u2019s proud of the fact that she left her real voice mostly untouched. \u201cI intentionally didn\u2019t want to tune it too much,\u201d she says. \u201cMy favorite Blondie<\/a> records are before she\u2019s a really good singer. There\u2019s a vulnerability in it, and there\u2019s this rawness that I find so appealing in a world that wants to over-filter and over-gloss everything.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe results range from coolly imposing (\u201cPretty Please\u201d) to provocatively silly (\u201cDouble\u201d) to flat-out funky (\u201cMurmurs\u201d). The music video she filmed with director Charlotte Ercoli for the single \u201cPotion,\u201d in which Teilz sings flirtatiously toward a life-sized puppet of her friend Dick Van Dyke<\/a> and rides around with his wife, Arlene Silver, in the original car from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang<\/em>, sums up this entire project\u2019s wildly fun, slightly absurd flavor.<\/p>\n \n\n
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