Natalia Kills: Pop’s Axe-Wielding Heroine

Bad things happen to bad people in singer Natalia Kills' eye-for-an-eye universe. Her much-discussed 'Wonderland' video has already stirred up European audiences with its unnerving scenes of stylized violence, which somehow startle more in 2011 than they might have ten years ago, when pop stars routinely (and expensively) scandalized MTV's late night lineup. But the controversy certainly didn't wound her popularity: Perfectionist, her multi-ranging debut, sold well, landing her in the Top 10 in Germany, where's she already become everyone's favorite pop mystery.

Whether Kills' internationally-approved iconoclasm will translates as effectively on this side of the Pond remains to be seen, but with Rihanna singing about the scent of sex on daytime radio and Gaga giving birth onstage on SNL, the time seems right for the British-born Kills to test American pop's outer limits. Her music itself—often called "dark pop", described as "pop with an opinion" by Kills—is fittingly confrontational, aligning agitated and confessional lyricism with brooding, nocturnal production from some of pop's most salient architects (Akon, Cherry Cherry Boom Boom, and Jeff Bhasker to name a few). This is murder on the dancefloor—but it's also so much more. Having just completed a successful US tour with Swedish dynamo Robyn, she's already provided Americans an attractive foreshadowing of what is to come. But ELLE digs deeper, catching up with Kills as she prepares to unleash Perfectionist on Americans this summer.