When we speak, Cobrah is about to release her debut album, Torn. The interview is off camera but her soft voice is unmistakable. For an artist who’s known for “BDSM pop”, Cobrah’s personality is extremely sweet. She’s into baking cakes on her off days - “Very off brand,” she admits - and she has logged over 1000 hours last year on Baldur’s Gate, a fantasy video game. All in all, she seems pretty chill.

Her music and visuals, on the other hand, tell a different story. If you’re not familiar with the enigma that is Cobrah, you are missing out. Her musical catalogue of pure hedonistic bass-fuelled cunty avant-pop includes titles like Good Puss, Brand New Bitch and Quick Lick, exude an unapologetic embrace of female sexuality, packaged in a tongue-in-cheek maximalism. Although her lyrics are fun and her songs high in energy, the production is a serious matter, packed full of quality visuals that more often than not have an unsettling twist.

Similarly, while her style is hyper feminine, there’s a darker edge to her personal aesthetic. Her latex is often nude in colour, uncannily appearing like a second skin. Her hair is bleached blonde but so are the eyebrows, giving off an ethereal, alien-like beauty. Her nails, also a pale nude, appear to grow out of the skin like claws. A succubus alien aiming for a bimbo Barbie vibe.

“I feel extra excited when it’s sexy but not too comfortable,” she tells me of this tension, which is why she depicts scenes like sensual UFO probings or CGI figures simultaneously making out and throwing up black sludge. “When I’m putting something at risk, that’s when I feel like I’m doing my best work. As soon as you foresee what’s going to happen, it’s not exciting anymore. And also, I’m a little bit of a nerd and I just like fantasy and… not gore… but, you know, this otherworldly vibe to things.”

Coat: The Attico | Stockings: Falke | Shoes: YSL

“I used to think confidence was something that was in you. A personality trait. But I don’t really think it is a personality trait,” Cobrah muses. “It’s something that you put on. An external thing that you have to do.”

Nothing exemplifies this more than the music video for Hush, the fourth song on her debut album. Cobrah dances seductively around her lover in her signature latex. The lover, however, is a veiny, bald alien with ink-black eyes – but a great jaw and brow bone. Does she believe in aliens, I ask? “Yes, I do. For sure. I mean, the universe is way too grand for there not to be a little something… Even if it's just very small, I'm sure there's a little something out there.”

To be so secure in yourself to not only exude hyper-sexuality but also take it to strange places takes panache. Perhaps it’s a bit of a cliche, but I ask Cobrah if she’s always been so confident. “I used to think confidence was something that was in you. A personality trait. But I don’t really think it is a personality trait,” Cobrah muses. “It’s something that you put on. An external thing that you have to do.”

“I think I’ve just mastered maybe the art of confidence where I can have an easy time of putting it on,” continues the artist, noting that she gets to do so many amazing things like performing and presenting, but none of it would be possible without training her confidence muscle. “When I was a kid I was wondering all the time, when’s the confidence going to come? But in my early 20s I started to pretend and it used to help quite a lot. It’s something you have to create for yourself, I guess.” One trick she recommends from when she was younger was to embody characters from movies she liked.

Dress: Nikita Karizma

While confidence is in fact something she wears, rather than something she was intrinsically born with, the singer makes the distinction that Cobrah isn’t actually a character that she puts on: “I am Cobrah all the time. It’s just an extension of me. Like a third leg, it’s just something that grows out of me. And if I didn’t do Cobrah, I would not be an artist, I think. There’s not a second project that I could take on.”

She’s a “pop dominatrix”, as the magazines call her. And this is something that she admires in other artists, too. “I'm really drawn to artists that are very in charge, if that makes sense,” explains the songstress. She’s drawn to people that have a powerful way of expressing themselves. “I mean, if I look at contemporary artists, I listen to a lot of rap. I listen to a lot of JT, for example. I'm really into the rapper girlies, because I feel like we're somewhat similar in this where we use a lot of sex and sex appeal in a very dominant way.”

Full look: Poster Girl

“I'm obsessed with the extremes of artistry and how far I can try to push myself to get a good image, or to portray the song the way it feels. And so I push myself through kind of extreme situations to make that happen.”

Next, I ask Cobrah about why she so gravitates towards latex, but it feels like I’m asking the wrong question. The first time she tried on latex was formative, of course, making her feel powerful. But it’s not necessarily fetish culture she’s so obsessed with: “I'm obsessed with the extremes of artistry and how far I can try to push myself to get a good image, or to portray the song the way it feels. And so I push myself through kind of extreme situations to make that happen.”

“I'm really addicted to that,” she continues. “I’m really addicted to a very difficult video shoot or photo shoot. Once I had a pipe in my mouth flowing with water, and I was bound with chains in a full latex catsuit… I've had hooks all over my face. I've been bathing in slime, I've been bathing in cement… There’s not a day where we don't really try to push the level of comfortability to get a good image.” Her music video for Torn, the principal song on her new album, has her being shrink-wrapped in latex – an act that probably had several health and safety officers shaking in their boots.

Naturally, her extreme visuals, unbridled sensual energy and crashing bass have made her a gay icon. I tell her this, and she giggles. “I think the gays know what’s up, always.” She notes. “They’re always first on the ball. I think they’re just the best people. You should always trust the gays.”

The artist once described her style as “gay workout music”, which is hilariously accurate, as I’ve sweated it out to her songs on more than one occasion. However her new album is a departure from this sound. It still has her sultry energy and electronic beats, but it’s more vulnerable and emotional, with less bouncy club songs. “When I wrote it, I felt like I wasn’t really challenging myself anymore,” she explained of her headspace at the time. “I was in Paris recording the start of this album, and on the first day we tried to make a club song, and it just… I don’t know… It felt really wrong and I was like, I’ve done this before.”

Cobrah is someone who cares deeply about creative control, with a hand in all of her decisions from set list to set design, and often working with the same collaborators. It’s paying off: she’s in an exciting place in her career. Her Coachella debut is coming up later this year. She’s got one foot in mainstream fame due to her recent TikTok virality, the other in underground nightlife where she got her start.

But to end in true Cobrah style, I asked her the craziest thing that’s ever happened to her in the club. “One time a girl slapped me really, really hard, and then she made out with me straight after. It was cool. It was hot.”

Cobrah on Pushing Performance to its Extremes, Believing In Aliens, and Her Craziest Club Experience

“I used to think confidence was something that was in you. A personality trait. But I don’t really think it is a personality trait,” Cobrah muses. “It’s something that you put on. An external thing that you have to do.”

“I'm obsessed with the extremes of artistry and how far I can try to push myself to get a good image, or to portray the song the way it feels. And so I push myself through kind of extreme situations to make that happen.”

We Don't Need Another Pride and Prejudice