PUSS PUSS Meets Lauren Auder: On Music, Fashion and Everything In Between

Beanie Stolper: Your first album, ‘The Infinite Spine’ in 2023 felt deeply inward, and this album, ‘Whole World as Vigil’, turns outward. Did you need to fully understand yourself before you could start writing about someone or something else?

Lauren Auder: Oh to fully understand oneself!! I don’t think that will ever happen, but it did feel like I reached a threshold. I spent so much time in a loop, a spiral, thinking about my own pain that when I started writing ‘The Infinite Spine’ it felt like time to break the seal. I felt that letting it out would help me move past, or at least exist alongside, my aches. All of those feelings exist in this second album, but it’s more about how to stop them from stopping me from living. And how everyone else’s wounds are as much a part of the world as mine. I wanted to meet people where they’re at too. Does that make sense?

BS: You’ve been described as “re-establishing yourself within pop”, does that label feel expansive or limiting, and are you interested in redefining or challenging what pop can hold and what it stands for?

LA: I think, as with most genre tags, pop is more a symbol than anything. In this case it felt like a manifestation, and a statement of intent. I wanted this music to have a potential far reaching quality, that many people, from all sorts of walks of life, could find themselves within it. I think that’s what the best pop music represents. For me it’s about as expansive a descriptor as any music could have.

BS: You have a background in rap and beat making. Do you ever miss the discipline of beat making, where everything has to lock in exactly or does your current process feel like a release from that?

LA: I think I miss the off the cuff fun of those moments, to be able to get into a flow state and not have to question what I’m trying to say so much. It’s more textural, more about my gut feeling. But that’s also because I don’t tend to be writing the lyrics in that mode. So it’s hard to say. I’d like to do it more again though.

BS: Walking in the Miu Miu Spring/Summer 2026 show, being backed by Lotta Volkova’s eye, did it feel like stepping into a character, or sharpening something that already exists in you? 

LA: For me it is always a chance to disappear into clothes for a moment, I rarely allow myself to slip into someone else’s vision, as I’m very picky and precise about my own work. It feels good when I respect and enjoy someone else’s work.

BS: Which artist or designer that you haven’t worked with, do you think would understand your energy immediately and which one would completely misread it in a way you’d actually enjoy?

LA: I’m going to mention someone I doubt I ever could work with, but like many people in my internet circles, one of my favourite designers ever is Miguel Adrover.

 He doesn’t really make collections anymore. But he has such an incredible eye, and folds real depth of emotion and engages with the world around him through clothing in a way I rarely see. His designs always seemed to fold all different decades and scenes into something anachronistic and unique. I love it!

BS: Lastly, what’s a sound you’re obsessed with right now that doesn’t fit anywhere yet?

LA: I can’t stop listening to sacred harp music and a lot of gospel. I’m really obsessed with large choirs and these micro harmonies that come together in these settings. I mean, everyone loves this stuff. I want to find a way to fold it into my music. To be continued…