New album CLOWNS out on May 9, 2025! «Clowns with aching feet limp down the street, telling toddlers how bleak the future will be, waving with broken arms at an audience that swipes them away on their screens.»
Are you part of the act? Or are you sitting comfortably in the VIP box? This album pulls you straight into the ring—where masks, dependency, and inner decay rule. You want to escape, but you're already wired to perform this bitter number with the other clowns until the lights go out.
On her sixth studio album CLOWNS, Nadja Zela exposes the present as an absurd spectacle—but within the grotesque, she finds tender utopias: moments of celebration and reconciliation rising like smoke signals in the darkness of dystopian perspectives.
“In times of rising hatred, we need the fantastical —both as a deliverance and refuge.”
The sound is analog, spacious, breathing, and trend-resistant. Avant-rock infused with a non-nostalgic touch of soul, blues, and jazz, carried by choral voices that speak for the collective. Nadja Zela's voice, deep and dark, flows between melody and spoken word, holding on to dreamlike, dadaist literary collages—seemingly personal, quietly political. The signature use of layered choirs invites you to sing along, dance, dream, and hope, while her defiance of songwriting conventions both delights and surprises.
Between madness, escapism, and dinosaur tears, one message remains: True freedom is rooted in tenderness.
Nadja Zela enjoyed a rather long and remarkable career with many years on the road. From her all-girl band Rosebud in the early 90s to her current solo project, she remained true to herself as a frontwoman with an unbound spirit. She’s a captivating vocalist, astonishing songwriter and an electric guitarist with a distinctive angry while bewitching style. Her music flirts with the warm sensuality of the blues, but she leads her brute folk into cinematic sound spheres that undermine any emerging nostalgia. She unsettles, then again spends unexpected comfort. Zela's writing draws noticeably from personal experience, but she finds a true, lyrical expression of our existence's brokenness and fragility in times of uncertainty.
