On the Rise
SISSY MISFIT

“There is this SOPHIE interview,” she tells BEST FIT. “I don’t want to quote this wrong, but from what I remember they asked her, ‘So how do you come up with your sound?’ She says that ‘pop music should be all about who is making the brightest and the loudest sound in the room. It shouldn’t be silent. It should be over the top, extravagant. It should be the loudest thing.’” 

Reverberations of the late PC Music pioneer’s sonic influence are integral to the artistic evolution of SISSY MISFIT. Specifically for heady single “HARDEST PUMP”, one of the many intoxicating cuts off her new SISSY FXXXCKING MISFIT LP. “Wanna be the loudest bitch in the club,” she proclaims in a nod to the aforementioned 2015 interview with Rolling Stone. As a fellow doll, it’s impossible for her to not be inspired, for it is SOPHIE who really unleashed something so magical into the world, such a power in pop music with a touch that is undeniable.  

“I have been making music for a little over a decade now,” she says. “I always say that I had an understanding of sound and electronic music pre- and post-listening to SOPHIE. The way I produce has changed so much with her influence. It was the first time for me, and I speak for so many queer and trans people who make music when I say this: it really opened so many people’s eyes into the practice we do. It was the one of the first times we heard so many harsh experimental elements exist in a very bubblegum pink, neon laser, pop, feminine way. You can be an experimental pop cunt.” 

SISSY is, in many ways, the latest in a coveted lineage of trans artists with a point to prove. Her punk foundations underpinning brash, techno-edged electropop made in her bedroom, never in the studio, still model for all manner of nightlife occasions. Surprisingly, she did not start in the club scene but merely broke in by accident. “I’m a musical theatre queer. Like, I am Lea Michele,” she declares. “I was the most annoying kid in middle school; I had no friends because of how annoying I am. There is this year-end book of when we were, like, 13, 12. My page is a hate page of everyone being like, ‘She just sings all the time, and it’s just loud noises, and it’s always about her.’ I would literally force my parents and my friends to watch a number I just came up with, so I was that bitch.” 

Music was always her thing – “a true old-school punk, metal goth,” she describes her teenage self. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before SISSY began sneaking out of the house at 16 and into the out-of-bounds bar district of her Istanbul homeland. She began hanging with the in-crowd, spending a lot of time in punk spaces, and singing with Iron Maiden cover bands. It was from this point onwards that a partiality for original music making took hold. At 19, SISSY was transformed by an incredible plethora of electronic dance music. “The Prodigy was obscure for Turkey,” she notes. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is actually my thing, I want to fuck all the acoustic instruments, like, this is so cool.’”  

SISSY MISFIT immediately made herself a name this way in Istanbul, but due to factors out of her control, she moved to London fresh after lockdown lifted. Candid about her bittersweet feelings, “I wouldn’t move to London if I didn’t have to,” she confesses. “I actually really, really love my culture, my country. I’m so deeply in love with my scene in Istanbul. But it was at a point: the decline of the Turkish political and economical world is progressively, rapidly, going really, really bad. I was completely lost and depressed.” SISSY knew the only way for her to keep on existing, on living and making art, was to force her way out of a broken system.  

This story of a struggling artist making it big in a foreign country does not act in accordance with glamorous Mulholland Drive generality. If SISSY had the choice, she would stay in Turkey her entire life. Though she has quickly adapted to London life – a self-confessed “social butterfly” who easily blends in – there are moments where her inner monologue overthinks in the newfound social scenarios that challenge her typical modus operandi. Encapsulated in the lyrics of hard hitter “GAME OVER” – “London Bridge is falling down” – SISSY credits the chaos of working in nightlife, getting lost in “the druggy afters world”, and the impossibility of escape, as the crux of a brutally honest body of work that could so easily soundtrack one of her shifts.  

Club antics aside, Istanbul and London couldn’t be more different when it comes to the way people socialise, according to SISSY. “There is a lack of unhingedness in London. Everyone and everything is so polished, and they want to stay polished, which is really funny. This is the birthplace of goth, so much electronic music and subcultures. So many of the problematic girls of the world were born and raised here. I stopped telling my age after my friends advised me. I still really struggle to filter myself for Western audiences. I was overthinking for the first time ever. To be able to survive the social ecosystem here, you do need to have a persona, a performance, and a certain way of, I always call it, the fake London politeness. Turkey did not PR train me to play these games.” 

On SISSY FXXXCKING MISFIT, everything is raw and unfiltered – the personification of harsh, tough love-tongued Middle Eastern women who raised the SISSY MISFIT persona. Those who love to sit at a table and “just shit on everything” over a couple of drinks, being really open with each other with no room for small talk. It’s the only way you are going to get appreciated in the Istanbul club scene. On how she carries herself: “I walk into a room with a pack of cigarettes, I chain-smoke, and I just speak my mind.”  

There is no song in the current EDM digisphere that more accurately embodies the essence of a night out in the Turkish underground than on runway ready heater “Istanbul Fever Dream”. SISSY’s process is “completely random”; song ideas stem from her Notes app or voice recording titbits. Rarely does she make a beat first before adapting her writing; “Istanbul Fever Dream” is an anomaly. It features a sample of Lady Gaga’s 2009 sleeper hit “Fashion”, pulled from the stems of a Soundcloud re-edit via Palestinian artist MONIB, formerly known as Mossy Mugler, an already familiar presence online. “I was just so in love with the melody, how did I not come up with this beat? This is insanely genius. They have this really interesting way of working electronic music with Arabic instrumentation,” says SISSY of her collaborator. “I always had this idea to just talk on a little bitch track about Istanbul and my life, the story told in a reality and fantasy way. It happened in a day while I was in Istanbul last summer, in my friend’s house. I recorded the track, like, literally after dinner. It just came to me.” 

Written, produced and mixed by SISSY MISFIT, the album is her answer to breaking into much clubbier territory than the dark pop sound of previous projects – 2025’s CRAWLSKIN and 2024’s THE EXXXOSKELETON DUNGEON. “I do think it still sounds very experimental and harsh, but in tracks like “GIRL IN BED” or “BREAK, LICK, DESTORY” it’s the most pop I’ve ever gotten with my style,” she explains. For lovers of SISSY’s industrial war cries, SISSY FXXXCKING MISFIT does not hold back on the former.  

What is most refreshing is the introduction of radio interludes. “96.9 SISSY FXXXCKING MISFIT FM” cranks the dial up to 11, a sort of filthy companion to Janet Jackson’s socially conscious Rhythm Nation 1814. “I remember when Virgin Radio Türkiye first launched, they made a couple of really hot pop stars do an intro. We had Nicki [Minaj], Beyoncé. LMFAO doing a special shout out. It was just 2010s madness. ‘Hi, this is Kesha, and you’re listening to Virgin Radio Türkiye.’ My dumb ass really thought she was talking to me.”  

Going for a sound that’s easily digestible in pop terms but still exhibiting her signature sass by way of electro-trash erotica, SISSY opens up about the concept for her self-titled moment, stored away in the back of her mind for a really long time. “I was just not ready to present myself that way, for personal reasons. I wanted to get a couple more fillers, and I wanted to be blonde before I do that, quite literally.” She is her sexiest, campest self on the cover art of her new LP, showing off breast prosthetic work by artist LYZZ, inspired by the effortless femininity and open vulgarity of Lil’ Kim’s The Notorious K.I.M. David LaChapelle shoot. “It wasn’t until maybe four or five years ago, I did the deep dive into her career. She is the blueprint; she really is the trailblazer of everything from fashion to music to innovation. The album cover where she has the album name tattooed on her belly, and it’s her covering her boobs, just a sexy vixen. I was like, ‘I want to have my album name on my body.’” 

Collecting magazines is a source of much style inspo, including all of Lil’ Kim’s covers on eBay. “If I get obsessed with a brand’s digital identity, or a celebrity or a photographer, I will collect the issues of magazines they were on, to go through the pages. It is a completely different game when you have the magazine in your hand. There's so many outtakes you will never see online.”  

Muse to Rick Owens, friend to Michèle Lamy, SISSY is a staple of the high fashion world. The striking video for her album’s lead single “X-MAKINA” first premiered in November 2025 at London’s ‘Engines of Utopia’ exhibition, personally curated by SISSY alongside Owens and Dr. Martens. He’s that big of a fan, even modelling a SISSY MISFIT embroidered cap for her Instagram. “I remember I was just having my morning coffee, going through my emails with a cigarette, then, ‘Hi Sissy this is Rick Owens. I am a designer based in Paris and Italy. I am an admirer of your work, let’s work together.’ I was like, surely not. Rick is a very professional, reserved, busy, busy, busy man. Rightfully so, one of the biggest designers at the moment. He's one of those people, if he wants to approach you, he will approach you. He sometimes just emails me out of the blue, being like, ‘Let’s have dinner.’” 

European tour dates in full swing, fresh out the frenzy of Fashion Month spent with Owens, SISSY MISFIT has a couple of new musical projects in the works: “I’m really, really excited. We are in talks with so many things.” If SOPHIE taught her anything, it’s that the only way forward is louder, harder. Subtlety is never the point. In London Town, SISSY is just getting started. Weaponising noise, she came to take up space and make it deafening. Stay tuned, if you dare.