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In a very weird way, musician Remi Wolf is like the iconic Barbie character—there’s nothing she can and won’t try. But Remi Wolf is more like a badass Barbie doll gone rogue, if you will. Broken free of the cellophane packaging. Sentient and not to be puppeteered. Swap out the golden blonde hair for a curly brunette mane, and voila! And why not? Remi Wolf’s guises are multitudinous—she’s been a university student, a Junior-Olympic skier, an American Idol contestant, and as the world knows her best: a popstar.

Popstar doesn’t even feel right. Remi Wolf transcends the word popstar. The 26-year-old songwriter’s music is funky, catchy, danceable, psychedelic, energetic, with her raspy voice peppering creative, unpredictable lyrics. Her projects are the work of a deeply talented individual who isn’t afraid to take risks and make the music she wants. In short, no one is doing it like her.

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Remi Wolf’s music story starts in elementary school. She and her friends would come up with dance routines and sing to pop-punk songs. Soon, those cover performances moved from the living rooms of their parents’ houses to the stag-es of talent shows. Then the stage moved outside. “One really influential experience of my life was when me and my friend Chloe decided to learn a bunch of covers and write a bunch of songs, and then go out on the street and busk at this art fair,” Remi tells me. “And in like two hours, we made about $200, which was fucking crazy at the time, because I had never had a job, and I’d never had a way to make money, or anything, really. That’s when I really realized, ‘Oh, maybe this is like a viable thing,’ which is a very naive thing to think at the time. But, still in my head, I was like, ‘Oh, this is like a fucking career.’

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All that being said, music was on the back burner throughout Remi’s early years. Skiing was instead at the forefront, wherein she qualified for two Junior Olympics. It wasn’t until she was 16 that she put away her skis and started focusing on music. “I think there’s a deep competitiveness within my soul,” she says of how the skills she learned as an athlete prepped her for a successful music career. That competitive streak saw her soon audition for American Idol. She made it a few rounds in, but ultimately her heart wasn’t set on being the show’s next winner, it was set on studying music at a university.

College is similar to American Idol in the sense that you’re being judged by people who have a specific idea of what is good and bad. But with musicians like Remi Wolf, you can’t wrap her up and shove her in a box. “Going to music school,” she recalls, “you’re fed a lot of in-formation. And I think that there’s a lot of boxes that are unfortunately pushed upon you, just because of your major in your classes. And you get labeled as a singing major, a songwriting major, whatever. And I think that that can end up harming people in the long run, and gets people really disheartened. And I don’t know,” she continues, “there’s a lot about music school that can be really sad and kind of strip the joy out of the process.” In class, the joy of music might have been stripped away, but when she returned home, it was back. “I think what kind of was my saving grace in school was I lived in this big house with 10 musicians, and we all just jammed all day. And because of that, I ended up missing a lot of class. And I didn’t go to school as much as I probably should have. But I think that ended up kind of saving part of me.”

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Living with a ragtag group of noise-makers didn’t just rescue her, it rescued what would become her fans from boredom. Her EPs You’re a Dog! and I’m Allergic to Dogs! and remix album We Love Dogs! garnered her a fervent fanbase. It’s now been nearly a year since her debut album Juno (her dog’s name—she wasn’t going to ditch the canine theme) dropped and further launched Remi Wolf into pop stardom. Over the past several months, she’s been touring the globe, both solo and opening for Lorde on the artist’s Solar Power tour.

Remi describes her live performances as a “big party.” Attend one of her shows, or pull up to any of her live gigs on YouTube, and you’ll see the artist both chaotically and rhythmically flinging her body across the stage. The smile on her face as she sings the lyrics to her songs is almost as large as the grins on the faces of the people in the audience. Like a weird, colorful, unconventional Barbie out of her box, her presence iconically exists across the world, bringing glee to anyone in its vicinity. “It’s just so sick to create happiness,” Remi concludes.