ANOTHER SIDE OF SAMIA

The acclaimed singer-songwriter searches for her true self and shakes off sexist expectations on her bold new album

- MAYA GEORGI

Step into Samia’s fantasy world and you'll find an alter ego that looks like her, but is entirely different. She wears a backward baseball cap on top of her long, curly, jet-black hair and sports denim Daisy Dukes. She lives in a balmy, emerald-green wetland. She’s completely unburdened by people’s opinions or expectations. This is Samia’s idealized self, and her name is Kiki Swamp.

As she shares her alter ego’s name, Samia, 28, can’t help but laugh. “I made a Sim of her,” the singer-songwriter says with a chuckle. “It’s like the most confident version of myself.”

Samia is worlds away from her daydream as she sits at a corner table at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in Manhattan. It’s mid-February, and a blanket of snow covers New York. This version of Samia describes herself as “a pretty naturally shy person,” as she picks apart her straw wrapper and fiddles with the gold rings on her fingers. She sips on an iced tea with a plate of french fries in front of her; she’s too nervous to try an oyster for the first time. (“What if it went poorly, and then it was documented forever?” Fair enough.) Throughout the conversation, she often says she feels like a child. It’s a funny comparison when you consider the very un-childlike music she makes, pairing seething lyrics with potent melodies, or her killer outfit: an elegant, dark-brown fur coat thrown over a black minidress paired with platform loafers.

Samia may not be in the Kiki Swamp uniform, but as she gears up to release her third album, Bloodless, she’s closer to that idealized self than ever before. That's not to say her first two albums, 2020's The Baby and 2023's