Kiesza: Biography, Discography and More | EDM Encyclopedia

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Introduction

Kiesa Rae Ellestad, known professionally as Kiesza, is a Canadian singer and multi-instrumentalist from Calgary. Active in music since 2008, she has established herself within the deep house and electronic music landscape through a combination of vocal performance, songwriting, and instrumental proficiency. Her career encompasses recording, touring, and live performance across multiple configurations.

As a multi-instrumentalist, Kiesza brings a diverse skill set to her creative process. Her ability to play multiple instruments informs her approach to electronic music production, allowing her to blend organic and synthetic elements within her recordings. This instrumental background provides a foundation for her work as both a recording artist and a live performer.

Her touring experience includes performances as both a headlining artist and as an opening act. This dual experience has shaped her ability to command stages of varying scales and adapt her performances to different audience contexts. Throughout her career, she has received several award nominations and has won multiple awards, reflecting industry recognition of her musical contributions.

Kiesza’s recording career began with her self-titled debut album Kiesza in 2008. From that starting point through her most recent confirmed release in 2026, she has maintained an active presence in music for eighteen years. Her catalog spans studio albums, live recordings, extended plays, and individual singles, demonstrating sustained productivity across nearly two decades.

Genre and Style

Working primarily within deep house and electronic music, Kiesza approaches dance music through a vocal-centric lens. Her productions pair her singing with electronic beats, bass lines, and synthesized textures. Rather than treating the voice as another layer in the mix, she positions it as the focal point around which production elements are arranged.

The deep house Sound

Singles such as “Hideaway” and “Giant in My Heart” illustrate her approach to the genre. These tracks combine danceable electronic production with melodic vocal hooks, placing emotional delivery within rhythmic frameworks designed for both club environments and personal listening. The production choices across her work reflect attention to low-end frequencies and percussive drive characteristic of deep house, while her vocal melodies add accessibility to the arrangements.

Her development as an artist across multiple releases reveals exploration within electronic music’s boundaries. From her debut in 2008 through her work in the 2020s and beyond, Kiesza has engaged with different production styles and sonic textures. This evolution is documented across her albums and EPs, each representing a specific point in her creative trajectory.

Collaboration plays a role in her artistic practice. Her live album day of the deadmau5, Live in Chicago, 2020 suggests a connection to the broader electronic music community. These collaborative relationships inform her production choices and expand the range of sounds available to her as a recording artist.

The tension between dance music‘s functional requirements and pop music’s melodic demands defines much of her output. Her recordings balance rhythmic propulsion with harmonic and vocal content, creating work that functions on dancefloors while retaining listenability in other contexts.

Key Releases

Kiesza’s discography encompasses studio albums, a live recording, and extended plays released between 2008 and 2026.

  • Kiesza
  • Sound of a Woman
  • Crave
  • Dancing and Crying: Vol. 3
  • day of the deadmau5, Live in Chicago, 2020

Discography Highlights

Kiesza arrived in 2008 as her debut album, establishing her recording career. Six years later, Sound of a Woman was released in 2014, representing a significant gap between her first and second studio efforts. Crave followed in 2020, arriving after a period that included EP releases and other projects. Her most recent confirmed studio album, Dancing and Crying: Vol. 3, is set for release in 2026, extending her album catalog into an eighteenth year of activity.

The live recording day of the deadmau5, Live in Chicago, 2020 captures a performance from that year. This release documents her stage presence and provides a record of her material performed outside the studio environment.

On the EP b front, Weird Kid was released in 2018, arriving between her second and third studio albums. Dark Tales followed in 2020, the same year as her Crave album. Bridged by a Lightwave appeared in 2021, extending her EP releases into the year.

“Hideaway” and “Giant in My Heart” stand as confirmed singles in her catalog. These tracks contributed to her visibility within electronic music circles and represent her ability to craft dance-oriented material with strong vocal components.

Her release schedule demonstrates periods of concentrated output interspersed with longer gaps. The years 2020 and 2021 proved particularly productive, yielding one fl studio album, one live album, and one EP across a twenty-four month span. This clustering contrasts with the longer intervals between her earlier album projects.

Famous Tracks

Kiesza Rae Ellestad, a Calgary-born singer and multi-instrumentalist, built her catalog across a range of releases spanning over a decade. The self-titled album Kiesza arrived in 2008, establishing her early creative direction before she gained wider recognition with electronic audiences.

Her commercial breakthrough centered on two singles: Hideaway and Giant in My Heart. Both tracks paired her vocal delivery with deep house production, landing on international charts and defining her presence in the dance music landscape. These songs appeared on the album Sound of a Woman (2014), which collected her work from that period into a full-length statement.

After the Weird Kid EP (2018), she returned with the album Crave and the EP Dark Tales, both released in 2020. That same year, she issued the live recording day of the deadmau5, Live in Chicago, 2020 (2020). The EP Bridged by a Lightwave followed in 2021, continuing her pattern of alternating between full-length projects and shorter releases. Her catalog is scheduled to expand further with the album Dancing and Crying: Vol. 3 (2026).

Live Performances

Kiesza has toured extensively as both a headliner and an opening act across multiple continents. Her stage setup emphasizes live vocal performance and multi-instrumental musicianship, separating her from DJ-only electronic acts. This approach allows her to recreate the vocal-heavy arrangements of her studio recordings in a concert setting without relying on backing tracks.

Notable Shows

The release day of the deadmau5, Live in Chicago, 2020 documents a specific collaborative performance. This recording captures her working alongside deadmau5, translating their shared material to a live venue environment. The project stands as both a standalone release and a snapshot of her adaptability when sharing a stage with another electronic artist.

Her touring history spans EDM festivals, club dates, and theater venues. This range reflects the flexibility of her catalog: tracks like Hideaway function in large outdoor festival settings, while deeper cuts from EPs like Dark Tales suit more intimate rooms. By shifting between headlining tours and support slots, she has reached audiences at different scales and in different contexts throughout her career.

Why They Matter

Kiesza represents a specific model within electronic music: the vocalist and songwriter who operates as an integrated creative force rather than a featured guest. This distinction gives her releases a consistency often absent from dance music driven by revolving-door vocal collaborations. Her multi-instrumental background informs her writing, resulting in tracks where vocal melodies and production elements share equal weight.

Impact on deep house

Her awards and nominations recognize this contribution to the field. The chart performance of Hideaway demonstrated that vocalist-fronted deep house could achieve commercial results without diluting its production values, influencing how labels and A&R teams approached similar artists in subsequent years.

With a recording career stretching from 2008 to scheduled releases in 2026, she has sustained output across shifting trends in electronic music. The progression from early work through Crave and toward future projects shows an artist maintaining a defined creative identity rather than chasing genre movements. Her habit of releasing EPs between albums keeps her catalog active and allows experimentation without the pressure of full-length statements. Kiesza serves listeners who want electronic music with genuine vocal performance and lyrical content at its center.

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