In Conversation x Karin Ann
Words by: Carolina Fernandez Bold
Karin Ann’s rise as an artist is anchored in an uncompromising commitment to emotional truth.
And people are responding to it.
Rooted in the indie and folk scene, Karin Ann is a singer-songwriter whose lyrics cut with a diaristic precision that refuse to blunt hard realities. She steps into activism with the same clarity about what matters, and she’s an emerging actor drawn to roles that echo the same charges found in her music. The twenty-three-year-old is carving a creative terrain that is distinctly her own, tapping into both the pulse of her generation’s urgencies and social issues, while also speaking to timeless experiences of love, selfhood, and freedom.
“It comes down to how honest I am able to be with myself,” Karin Ann says. Her single released this August, I was never yours, is a study in brutal clarity; the sound of someone acknowledging the end of a relationship long after it’s already arrived. Propulsive lyrics move here with the momentum of a choice finally made; the kind that reveals freedom and loss in the same breath.
November’s all my money, Karin Ann’s most recent release, pivots inward. This post-relationship plea feels less directed at another person than at a history that still pulls at her edges. A conversation with the parts of herself she hasn’t outrun yet.
Writing in English as a non-native speaker once fed a sense of imposter syndrome, but lately, Karin Ann has started to see it as a creative strength. “Someone I work with told me I often write things in a way he’d never think of, and it’s probably because English isn’t my first language,” she says. Growing up in Slovakia, with Syrian and Czech heritage, and now splitting her time between London and LA, Karin Ann’s background doesn’t sit in her music as biography; it works more like an undercurrent, shaping her instincts and how she moves through the world. As she puts it, “It all shapes you and shows up in how you show up.”
The instinct to show up truthfully and unapologetically carries into her political activism: from the queer romances of her music videos to her headline-making act of resistance in Poland, protesting the surge of homophobic policies. Reflecting on that moment in 2021, holding a pride flag during a televised performance, Karin Ann says, “I only thought about how important it was for the people in the LGBTQ+ community in Poland to know that someone has their back.”
In its own way, this moment mirrors her song writing. A same refusal to look away from the truth; a same insistence on naming what others might not. Karin Ann knows the weight of the platform she has and doesn’t shy from it. “It’s important for people who are given platforms to talk about important things.” A seemingly obvious statement, and yet so often do we see the opposite occur.
Acting has become another avenue for Karin Ann’s creativity, a parallel path to her music rather than a replacement. “Since they’re both tied to emotional truth and knowing yourself, to me they feel like two sides of the same coin.” She first explored performance as a child in musical theatre and through professional figure skating, and more recently, she has appeared in the 2024 series The Tattooist of Auschwitz and the 2025 film Orion.
It’s no surprise then, that looking forward, “my biggest dream is to go into musical theatre” — the world where song, movement, and storytelling collide.
“I’ve found touring unsustainable for me health-wise even though I love playing shows. Mainly I want to find a routine that is sustainable in the long term with my physical and mental health in mind,” she explains. Karin Ann is crafting a creative life on her own terms, where every step across music, stage and screen, follows instinct and honesty.