On a recent afternoon, Miss Monique was in her studio in Lisbon when she got the news: Her upcoming headlining show at Brooklyn Pacha was sold out.
The Ukrainian producer, known for her progressive house productions and signature green hair, has already played key U.S. festivals like Ultra and EDC Las Vegas. But news of a sold-out headlining set hit different.
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“I’m very appreciative of the U.S. crowd for the support,” the artist born Alesia Arkusha tells Billboard over Zoom from her home in Lisbon. “To bring your own show, that’s a completely different thing… you have more responsibility. But we’re sold out, so I think it’s another great sign of our relationship with the U.S. market.”
Certainly it points to real momentum toward Miss Monique — already famous throughout the European club scene — raising her profile in the U.S., which she cites as a major goal for 2027. “I would say I’m at the very beginning,” she says of breaking in the States. “For me, the U.S. crowd and market is completely different from everything I’ve done before.”
But with a sold-out show in one of the country’s key dance markets, she acknowledges with a smile: “I feel like my relationship with the U.S. is having an amazing start.”
She’s arriving with something special to offer: Biorhythm, the immersive audiovisual show she debuted at Tomorrowland’s Freedom Stage in July and brought to Argentina last month. (She next brings it to France later this month.) The show’s imagery weaves together the industrial and natural worlds — jellyfish, forests, iron structures — as a subtle meditation on what gets lost when technology crowds out the organic world.
“I started understanding that maybe I have a small power to remind people to be protective of nature,” she says. “I don’t want to give people a lesson, but Biorhythm is that reminder that we shouldn’t forget about nature.”
The concept is personal. Miss Monique grew up in Ukraine surrounded by parks and open land, and says she’s felt nature receding from her life as she’s moved through the churn of touring during her rise over the last 15 years. Biorhythm is her attempt to hold onto something she finds sacred, pairing it with the music she finds equally profound. “I love to live next to nature,” she says, turning her camera to show the forest outside her window. “Even here, I try to find places where I can sit and see something peaceful.”
Finding this peace hasn’t been easy. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Miss Monique says she “woke up in bed at 4:00 a.m., because of the explosions.”
After the war started, she moved from Ukraine to Portugal and continued producing her signature progressive house and touring the world behind it, while her friends and family lived amid war. That dissonance has been painful. “My heart is broken,” she says. “Until the war is over in Ukraine, I cannot fully enjoy this life. I have amazing people around me; I’m based in a fantastic country. But I know my home is going through hell.”
In the war’s early days, she would often cry when audience members held up Ukrainian flags or offered words of support. She’s since “learned how to keep my emotions inside,” but the weight of the situation is never far from her mind. “I still always have that mark on my heart,” she says. “It’s the same for every Ukrainian.”
She takes solace in music, which she says with gravitas “is also medicine for me” as much as it is for those who see her play. “Music saved my life so many times,” she continues. “It saved me emotionally in the hardest moments. Music has always been there for me.”
She’s had a lot of new music to speak of this year, with her latest single “Undertone” with Belgian producer Paradoks out today. It follows “Beauty in Us,” her September collaboration with English pop legend Robbie Williams. The two first connected in 2023, when Miss Monique remixed a song from Williams’ electronic trio Lufthaus. She says working with him again on a full track “was an absolute honor.”
This spring, Miss Monique intends to spend one or two months living in the U.S., not just touring through it, as she works to raise her profile in the country. “When we travel, we are huge fans of exploring, not just coming in and out,” she says of her and her partner. “I want to feel how people live, the culture, the mentality. I want to understand what it’s like to be based there.”
She’s already started doing her homework. In 2024 she made a trip to the Grand Canyon, where she recorded one of her signature outdoor livestreams. Standing at the canyon’s edge as the sun set behind her, she was moved to tears by the beauty. “I never even dreamed that I would be there one day,” she says. “That stream was one of the best of my life.”
It’s fitting that one of her biggest shows in America arrives with a nature theme. Green, after all, has long been her signature color. What started as teenage hair experimentation eventually became her brand, which was cemented when she tried going back to her natural hair color and fans revolted.
“They were fighting with me,” she says with a laugh. She called her stylist the next morning. The green has stayed ever since, spreading from her hair to her visuals to the cascade of green heart emojis that follow her across social media.
“Step by step,” she says, “I realized green is my color.”
