Q&A: Dance music artist Kiesza opening her Dancing and Crying tour in Pittsburgh

As dance music artist Kiesza prepares to release “Dancing and Crying: Vol. 2” on Friday, the Canadian electropop singer reflected on which of the two acts she’d been doing more of in 2025.

“I’ll be doing more dancing the second half of this year, and I did more crying the first half of this year,” she said last week. “I lost a dog, a very beloved dog to me, in February. So I had a rough few months, so lots of crying. And then lots of just finishing music, which is something I love. I love that process.

“It’s grueling, the last sort of 10% getting everything, all the mixing and the levels, right, and making sure it’s ready to go out to the world. But that was a huge part of the beginning of this year. And now it’s all just performing and sharing the music and writing the next ‘Dancing and Crying,’ which is actually almost finished, which is pretty exciting.”

Kiesza will be touring in support of the aforementioned album, which has spawned two singles so far, “Stays In Bed” and “So Erotic” featuring noted techno artist Peaches. The tour kicks off in the Pittsburgh area on Aug. 5 at Crafthouse in Whitehall, with Bonnie McKee — a frequent Katy Perry collaborator — opening the show.

“It’s going to be a really cool show. It’s sort of set up like a mix between a DJ show and a live performance show. So the music will never stop. There’s always gonna be a dance beat going through the whole show,” she said. “So it’s really set up to dance. And then I’m bringing my dancer, Jaylen Brown, who is an absolute star, and the two of us perform the whole night. It’s very artistic. It’s gonna be very heavily focused on ‘Dancing and Crying’ (Vol.) 1 and 2, and then the hits that everybody knows and loves, focused almost 100% on the dance music that I’ve made throughout the years.”

Kiesza couldn’t recall if she’d been to Pittsburgh in the past, but she said she always remembers the first night of a tour.

“It’s always nerve-wracking because it’s the first show and you’ve been rehearsing, but you’ve never had a chance to perform in front of a live audience,” she said. “There’s just something that you can’t replicate with a live audience. You’ll be rehearsing, rehearsing, and then you get out there and you feel their energy, and it changes the way that you perform.

“I’m always a little nervous, like am I going to forget all my choreography? Or sometimes I get so addicted to the crowd that I just jump out of it anyways and then my dancer is like, ‘What’s going on?’” she added with a laugh. “‘Are we improvising now?’ So yeah, it’s gonna be great.”

After first going viral in 2014 with the one-take video of “Hideaway,” she’s written songs for Rihanna and Kylie Minogue and performed on songs with Pitbull, Duran Duran, Skrillex and Diplo. A car accident in 2017 sidelined her with a traumatic brain injury for around two years, but she’s returned with an album, several EPs and a load of singles. Plus “Dancing and Crying: Vol. 3” is almost done for a future release.

In a Zoom call from Toronto, Kiesza discussed the collaboration with Peaches, her highly unusual career path, touring with McKee and more:

With Volume 2 (of “Dancing and Crying”), what were the inspirations and the influences behind it?

Volume 2 started out one way, and it went another direction when my friend and the main producer of this volume, Jess Cake, came to visit from the UK and he ended up just on a whim, he came and kind of never went back. He just decided to move to Toronto and then the project took a different turn because Peaches came through and so we had “Stays In Bed” and then we had “So Erotic” and I was just really liking that sort of dark, sexy vibe. I hadn’t really leaned into that side of myself as an artist, the sensual sort of outwardly sexy side, and I just thought how fun would that be to just go hard, like full into this moment and we just leaned into it. I have one song called “It’s My Birthday” that was written on my birthday. It’s probably the wild card of the group. (laughs) Because it’s just wild.

How did “So Erotic” come together with Peaches?

It’s probably one of my favorite songs I’ve done, honestly. It was such an amazing process working with Peaches and so inspiring as well. I fully slid into her DMs. (laughs) And I didn’t expect her to get back because a lot of people on Instagram, the way it works is the messages get filtered. And so if you’re not following each other already, you might not see the message. I didn’t really expect to (hear) back and she got back right away. I didn’t realize she lived in Berlin. I knew she was Canadian, but she was living in Berlin, but just so happened to be in Toronto exactly when I messaged her. She was visiting her mom. It just was very serendipitous so she came through the studio, and we wrote that song together with three producers. It was like a party. (laughs)

We had Sugar Jesus who did “Destiny and Crying” (Vol. 1). Jess Cake was visiting. And then our friend Bobby Love was just in the neighborhood and came through. We actually had four producers, there was a fourth hanging out with us who did Radiohead and Coldplay and Jamiroquai, some iconic artists, just happened to roll through as well. It was like a full party in the room. Peaches was I think a little overwhelmed once she walked in and saw four producers in my room. I was like, no, we’re just all hanging out and having fun. And then she got on the mic, and I could barely hear what she was singing because I built her a little fort castle out of blankets as a vocal booth, literally behind me in my living room. She went in and just was mumbling stuff and I couldn’t hear. And then we turned up the volume and one take, it was done. She was such an icon.

Is that the best thing that’s happened to you by sliding into someone’s DMs?

It’s one of the better ones, I will say. I’ve slid into a few DMs over the years. I’m not gonna lie. I mean, it was funny, Joey Bada$$ on my first album, we both slid into each other’s DMs simultaneously. He was just like, I love “Hideaway” and then I had been loving his music and I tweeted at him in the DMs, so that was an amazing moment. You never know, right?

So they can be successful sometimes?

Oh yeah, I think a lot of collaborations you hear nowadays come from that. I’m sliding into a few more DMs lately.

So we’ll see what happens on Vol. 3, right?

There is a potential really cool feature. Yeah, so we’ll see. I can’t confirm it yet. But there’s a great story, if it does get confirmed. There’s a really good story to go with it that involves DMs. (laughs)

With the song “So Erotic,” what stood out to you about that song that you would want to make it a single? How did you know that it was something special?

Well, Peaches is on it, first of all. I could just feel the vibe. As a dancer, I knew the dancers were going to want to dance to the song. It’s very kinky. And even if people don’t want to admit it, I think we all like to be a bit kinky now and then. (laughs) Even if it’s behind the scenes, and it’s definitely a song to flirt and to have fun with someone you’re flirting with or even on the dance floor. I know my LGBTQ audience are going to go nuts for it on the dance floor. I had started performing where I tied a leather whip to my microphone. So I was already kind of playing around with some fun BDSM-style stuff on stage, light for the family, BDSM for the family. (laughs) I just was leaning into it more and more. “So Erotic,” I mean, you just listen to it. I actually noticed how people were reacting to it because I did some secret listening parties before we chose the music, and people really responded to that one. I noticed that they were remembering it. They were asking me about it. So it was pretty clear, pretty early, honestly.

You’re going to be touring with Bonnie McKee. Have you toured with her before?

Yeah, we went on tour last year, and it was so much fun that we had to do it again, honestly. Bonnie is such a cool person and really amazing to tour with as well, because she’s so nice and sweet, and we get along very good. We call ourselves the Redhead Brigade. (laughs) We became really good friends in that process, and she is a really incredible performer as well. So it’s a really fun combination, the two of us together.

You’re also going to have a feature on Bonnie McKee’s “Electric Heaven” that comes out pretty soon. Was that just from the relationship you two had together already?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s her deluxe album that she’s putting out, so she’s doing features on this version. And honestly, I feel bad because I was so busy finishing up my project that it took forever for me to get out to L.A. and go record with her. But we ended up recording in her house, in her living room. She did all the engineering herself. She’s such a badass. She edits all her music videos and edits a lot of the productions. And I loved the song already. I’d heard it already. And she was just really gung ho. We made a music video as well.

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From the Royal Canadian Navy to the Miss Universe Canada pageant, that’s not the normal path to a music career.

No. (laughs) I’ve had a weird life. I was a tall ship sailor before the Navy, too. I sailed from Victoria, Canada, to Hawaii on a boat. I was determined. I was supposed to be going to Japan actually, all the way from Canada and I got into music school. By the time I got to Hawaii, I found out I had been accepted into music college. So I ended up deciding to go to music school instead. I’m happy I did because it’s worked out for me. It’s never been a normal trajectory.

My life, I don’t know if God was playing a funny joke on me, but nothing about my life has been normal. Even when I try to get normal, some weird thing will happen to me. So I realized that I’m just meant to have a weird life. When I got my head injury and got in the car crash, and through my recovery, I found myself (becoming) a dinosaur digger and discovered an 80-foot diplodocus through my healing process, which led to the discovery of the smallest diplodocus ever found. Not a normal trajectory when you’re healing from a car crash to become an amateur paleontologist but….

Where did that happen? Was that in Canada?

That was in Wyoming and that’s why in “Dancing and Crying (Vol. 1),” two of the music videos are shot in Wyoming. We were actually shooting them while simultaneously going on dinosaur digs. I was like, since I’m already going here, I might as well shoot some music videos. And it was such a beautiful landscape. My friend Ben, who’s an oddity dealer and owns a museum in Toronto, he’s the one who gets me on all these wild adventures with dinosaurs.

Who knows what’s going to happen in the next couple of years?

For real, it’s a real thing, especially with me. I don’t know if it’s just that I get bored or if I just am endlessly curious, but I’m always trying crazy, wild, new things. I’m very nerdy and some of my nerdiness leads me down all these weird paths as well.