ILUKA
An interview with Iluka, exploring her latest album release
the wild, the innocent & the raging
ILUKA’s latest album the wild, the innocent & the raging offers a body of work that feels both intimate and expansive. It isn’t just an album, it’s a reckoning, a reclamation and rooted in real feeling; unguarded, textured, and confidently hers. Across this release, she sifts through tenderness and fury, reflection and release, the things that shaped her and the parts she knew she had to let go of. She blurs the lines between softness and fury, capturing the kind of emotional duality that feels deeply human and instantly magnetic. ILUKA has always carried a cinematic aura in her music, but here she sharpens it. There’s a boldness in the way she allows softness to coexist with power, a rawness in the way she lets joy and heartbreak spill into the same breath. The album feels lived-in, it has that sting of truth arriving before you’re ready and the electricity of reclaiming your own story.
In our conversation, ILUKA welcomes us into that emotional terrain: the wildness she’s protected, the innocence she carries, and the rage she learnt to trust. What unfolds is a portrait of an artist who isn’t reinventing herself, but revealing herself; more honestly than ever before.
Written By Siena Robb
Your album the wild, the innocent & the raging feels like a whole universe. When did you realise those three energies were the core of this record?
“I didn’t set out with a strict concept to be honest. Those energies, the wild, the innocent, the raging, revealed themselves gradually. They kept showing up in the songs long before I had language for them.
The wild emerged first, born from a period of total upheaval. I had lost everything from my old life and I was standing in this blank, scorched space with nothing left to protect. It was terrifying, but it was also liberating. When you have nothing to lose, you tap into a raw and reckless kind of freedom. That became the wildness at the heart of the album.
The innocent seeped in through the album’s sunlit, Americana-tinged nostalgia. There was this idealised version of America I carried with me, the place where I believed all my dreams would finally unfold. I wanted to honour that sense of innocence while also acknowledging the tension between the fantasy and the reality I ultimately met.
And then came the raging. That is the femme rage simmering through everything. I didn’t try to soften it or make it pretty. It is the engine of the record, the uncompromising voice that refuses to stay small.”
There’s a beautiful current of reclamation running through your new work. What sparkled that energy for you creatively?
“The birth of this record came from a true dark night of the soul after I moved from Australia to America. I went through a huge breakup, I’d lost my entire old team, and I found myself here with this overwhelming sense of having absolutely nothing. It was a brutally difficult time. There were days when it felt like I was crawling out of the most crippling anxiety just to get through the day.
But somewhere in the middle of all that, I rolled up my sleeves and found this tiny spark of defiance that I had to lean on to survive. As I slowly climbed out of that hole, I began to see how small my old life had kept me and how comfortable certain people back home were with me staying small. There was rage in that realisation, but also a sharp, undeniable clarity.
Rebuilding myself from the ground up became its own form of reclamation. It was me choosing who I wanted to be rather than who I had been told to be. And the promise I made to myself during that process was simple but profound: I would never play small again. That vow is the driving force behind this whole record.”
You draw this beautiful line between softness, rage, and resilience. What draws you to exploring that duality and what does it mean to you creatively?
“Because life is full of duality. If I were only full of rage and resilience, I’d miss all the beauty. At my core, I’m an extremely sensitive person, very soft, very much a lover girl. But I’m also full of this fiery defiance that I’ve had since I was a kid. For a long time I thought those two sides of me clashed, that they cancelled each other out somehow.
Now I realise they’re actually my superpower. The softness lets me feel things deeply enough to write about them, and the rage gives me the courage to tell the truth without shrinking. I’m honestly the softest and most furious version of myself right now, and creatively, that’s where the magic lives for me.”
What did honesty and authenticity look like for you while making this album?
“For me, honesty and authenticity on this album meant going into the parts of myself that scared me…the darker, shadowy places I’d usually avoid. It was about saying out loud things I would normally keep inside. There was this constant voice in my head asking, Is this too much? And usually, if I was asking that, it probably meant it was exactly the right thing to do. It became a signal to keep going, to push myself further.
The magic was always in that discomfort, being on the edge of my own fear and vulnerability. That’s where the songs found their power, in leaning into the parts of myself I’d usually shy away from.”
Your visuals are so cinematic and intentional. How connected are the songs and imagery in your creative process?
“The songs and visuals are incredibly connected for me. I’m a very visual person, so when I’m writing a song, it already exists in a visual world in my head. Creating the imagery around a song is just an extension of that world. I’ve always admired artists like Bowie and Kate Bush, who didn’t just make music, they created entire worlds you could step into. That’s exactly what I wanted to do with this record, to build a space that feels immersive, cinematic, and alive.”
What were you listening to during the making of this album that might surprise people?
“Other than the artists people might expect, I’m a bit of a soundtrack nerd. I love listening to scores when I’m writing, even for poetry or early song ideas, because they instantly put me in a mood or a world. Particularly for this album I was drawn to films like Paris, Texas and Blue Velvet, which have that feeling of open roads, loneliness, and a kind of dark beauty. But I’m especially drawn to gothic, feminist-leaning, dreamy worlds – soundtracks like Valerie and Her Week Of Wonders, Crimson Peak, Lost Highway, The Virgin Suicides, Suspiria, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Pan’s Labyrinth.
They’re all moody, immersive, and have this mix of darkness, beauty, and women at the centre of these intense, emotional worlds. They definitely helped shape the world of this record. They were like a blueprint for the aesthetic and emotional universe I wanted to create.”
You’ve lived and created between Australia and the US; how did each place play a part in your creative identity?
“I think the US has pushed me and forced me to expand creatively in ways I never imagined. It’s made me bolder and more unapologetic in how I show up as an artist. Australia will always be part of me, but being in the US has challenged me, opened new doors, and helped me step fully into the artist I want to be.”
What’s in the cards for 2026?
“Touring! I can’t wait to bring these songs to life on stage and share this world with everyone. 2026 is all about connecting with people, feeling the energy of the fans, and seeing these songs take on a life of their own.”
Leaving the conversation, one thing becomes clear: the wild, the innocent & the raging isn’t an album you passively listen to. It’s one you sit with, you absorb it’s depth like a sponge. It mirrors back your own edges, your own softness and your own sensitivities. ILUKA has built a world where contradiction isn’t something to tame; it’s something to honour. The album moves like a journey through the parts of ourselves we don’t always name out loud, the girl we used to be, the woman we’re becoming, and the rage that rises whenever the world tries to quiet us down. ILUKA holds all of that with an honesty that feels grounding, and with a creative instinct that’s entirely her own.
As she steps into this new chapter, she isn’t asking for permission. ILUKA is standing exactly where she’s meant to be: in the thick of the wild, the innocent, and the raging and inviting us to meet her there.
