There are many iconic horses in folklore, literature and modern pop culture, from the Greek flying stallion Pegasus to Anna Sewell's Black Beauty to the white horse Bianca Jagger putatively rode into New York's legendary Studio 54 nightclub. But, being "half-horse, half-human," Germany's horsegiirL (aka Stella Stallion) is the first equine dance-pop star – generating her own mythology.
In June, the DJ, producer and singer/songwriter presented a debut album, NATURE IS HEALING, transcending her signature hyperpop-adjacent happy hardcore with a nostalgic Eurodance fervour – the vocals ever hushed. She welcomes the reception from her fans, known as "Farmies".
"So far, so good," Stallion rhapsodises. "I've been getting a lot of messages that people were surprised by the album, but also really in a positive way surprised – because I think maybe the expectation was [that I would want] to do a purely club record and only really hard-hitting, high BPM tracks, which the album is obviously not. I'm glad that people followed through and kind of came on this journey with me and gave this different sound a chance."
Electronic dance music has a long tradition of acts cultivating mystique by concealing their identities, courting anonymity or adopting personas – beginning with Kraftwerk, Germany's machine men in the '70s, presaging those French robots Daft Punk.
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Alternative narratives pique curiosity but function as novelty, potentially distracting from the craft. Happily, the Farmies – an inclusive and often queer Gen Z community – appreciate the ingenuity of Stallion's fantasy worldbuilding (and Black Girl Magic) as offering a tantalising escape over marketing strategy.
Regardless, the star's camp stipulates that the media not ask about her mask or character or any charade. When even Anthony Fantano spoke to Stallion, he declared "I Interviewed A Literal Horse."
Zooming from Berlin at 10 am, Stallion is convincing – her equine vizard, chestnut-toned with a heart-shaped white birthmark, and voluminous mane and eyelashes so uncanny as to possibly be real.
The lore is that Stallion was born to a human father and horse mother and raised on the idyllic Sunshine Farms. The foal performed as a country vocalist – yeehaw! – to other creatures before she was discovered by the famous mare Whitney Horseton at a harvest festival.
Embracing rave, Stallion took up DJing retro styles – Eurodance, trance, hardcore, gabber and hardstyle – and crossed over to the human realm. In the meantime, she moved to Berlin, a city equated with arch techno purism, and joined the Live From Earth collective.
The horse has symbolic status in Berlin historically. The city was settled by Polabian Slavs and, though subsequently displaced, their Sorbian descendants mark Easter with the horse-riding procession křižerjo – men wearing black top hats and tailcoats and white gloves, and the horses’ braids, ribbons and flowers as bystanders sing hymns.
"They're gone – they've been pushed out of the picture, in a way, you know?" Stallion nods, with the barest suggestion of a German accent. "You rarely see horses anymore, when there was a time where humans and horses co-existed so much more than they do now."
Living in the metropolis isn't so incongruous for a hoofed mammal, either. Stallion notes that she isn't far from Sunshine Farms. "I guess Berlin has always had this magnetic pull." Besides, the city "has a very calming feel" compared to other "fast-paced" and "really expensive" hubs, she reasons.
"A lot of people think of Berlin as just this party, techno, club space – which is a shame, really, 'cause it's a city with so much history and so much culture and also a very green city with lots of lakes and a lot of nature surrounding it and also inside of the city."
Stallion first aired Harvest Heartbreak (with the techno duo BAUGRUPPE90) in 2022 – and played a buzz DJ set for HÖR Berlin. She found greater success the next year with the viral happy hardcore anthem My Barn My Rules – off the again hippic-themed EP Farm Fantasies recorded with fellow Live From Earther MCR-T.
Meanwhile, Aussie TikTok personality Olly Bowman (Mr Melk) boosted the track when he demonstrated his "shoulder injury dance". My Barn My Rules is still Stallion's top song on Spotify.
British Vogue profiled Stallion as a fashion fave, and Mixmag included her in its list "The Top 25 DJs Who Defined The Year 2023". In late 2024, she toured the Hayfever party across Europe. Early last year, Stallion rolled out her premiere solo EP, vip – very important pony, which, encompassing materiaL hor$e, revelled in the decadent celebrity life. She landed a Mixmag cover and pranced along to play Coachella and Detroit's prestigious Movement Electronic Music Festival.
Stallion's NATURE IS HEALING album title was prompted by the popular COVID-19 lockdown meme celebrating the restoration of Earth – and stands as her manifesto. Far from fanciful, she advocates wholeness and species' mutual interdependence, imploring humanity to live harmoniously with the natural world.
In her press materials, Stallion urges listeners to "touch the ground. Fall into the sound." And she promulgates a sanctuary (or "new radical centre for transcendental belonging") called ONeEARTH, stating "ONeEARTH is not a destination, it is a return to the source" and stresses that "This is not a place for healing; it is a place where nature heals through you."
Now aligned with RCA Records, Stallion reveals fresh facets musically. Indeed, she inclines towards dreamier terrain – Balearica, ambient and even New Age – over pounding breakbeats. Stallion uses samples from natural surrounds such as birdsong, percussion and pan flutes. But the vibe is predominantly rapturous Eurodance, recalling classic Jam & Spoon.
"I think, in a way, this album for me feels more like a return to myself also sonically, because I always loved hardcore and hardstyle and gabber – all of it. But that wasn't always just what I listened to.
“I listened to a lot of different music and especially this kind of like electronica, trip hop, New Age spiritual sound of the mid-'90s – as well as those connect-the-dots with the Janet Jackson nod. I think that [lush] sound was also very much present in my childhood – and it was really nice to explore that part of club music and electronic music on my album."
Stallion was determined to address serious topics. "I just had so many things I wanted to talk about. I just felt like I needed to lean also more on songwriting and vocals – because a club track, oftentimes [it] is very hard to say a lot of things, because it's very repetitive and it doesn't follow the classic pop structure of writing."
She liaised with prominent producers in addition to her longtime associate DJ Luvhunter – an Austrian active in the hard dance resurgence. Among them was AG Cook, the PC Music boss and hyperpop pioneer best known as Charli xcx's cohort. In fact, the Londoner co-helmed Stallion's single Obsessed of 2024. "I'm still in awe that this many amazing musicians wanted to work with me," she says.
Cook "recommended" another key player in French DJ/producer Nömak (Nicolas Petitfrère), Stallion realising that she was already familiar with his work on Charli xcx's 2019 Charli, loving the song 2099 featuring Troye Sivan. "I was like, 'No way!'"
Stallion likewise collaborated with Margo XS, who'd co-produced Zara Larsson's Grammy-nominated banger Midnight Sun. She "immediately connected" with the American and they cut the album's euphonious 'deep horse' outro, MUSIC GOES ON. "We just had such a good time," Stallion recollects. "We were in her bedroom and just jamming out."
Also pivotal? Canadian experimental pop artist Casey MQ – "a really dear friend" who, as it happens, was extensively involved in Mallrat's Light hit my face like a straight right. Crucially, he co-produced the blissful lead single from NATURE IS HEALING, only the best, Stallion's post-Y2K revival reinterpretation of crossover trance classics à la Fragma's Toca's Miracle or Ian van Dahl's Castles In The Sky.
"He kind of helped shape some of the melodicness of the album – because the very first track for the album was only the best. I think that was kind of a starting point where I felt like, 'Wow, we nailed the kind of melancholy and the euphoria that I wanted it to sound like.'"
But, while widening her circle, Stallion is the auteur. "I think what really helps is when you have a strong concept – I had a really strong concept and vision. I knew what I wanted it to sound like and what I wanted it to be like and what I wanted to say.
“And that really helps to find the right people who can help you enhance that because, if you're still in the kind of searching phase and you're a little bit like, 'Oh, I don't know, maybe,' then it's also hard for producers and songwriters. I know that myself when I work with others for their project. If they don't have a vision, it's very hard for me to actually help them because you're just tapping in the dark."
Horses can sleep standing up or lying down – but the generally indefatigable Stallion has had to contend with instant fame and the demands of international gigging.
Pre-album, she travelled to Ecuador on a transformative vacation, participating in an ayahuasca ritual and conceiving the glitchy that's my beach!. However, Stallion de-emphasises any shift in outlook during her South American sojourn.
"This Ecuador trip is coming up in quite a few interviews, which I don't mind; it's just that I don't think it actually shaped me this profoundly or changed the course of my views or of my philosophy this profoundly. If anything, it just gave it more urgency, really.
"I already had those beliefs – I already felt like the true source of everything is Mother Earth, and we need to protect her, and we need to remember that the end goal isn't a more efficient and more electronic and AI future. I think being in Ecuador just kind of enhanced that feeling of connectedness."
Inherently an artist of the digital age, Stallion nevertheless expresses disquiet over AI – a track on NATURE IS HEALING entitled organic intelligence (oi). Hyperpop is typically synthetic, its aesthetics promoting artifice and irony. Yet Stallion upholds authentic experience.
"I feel overwhelmed and hopeless and sad and scared and all of these things when I think about the kind of power that very few billionaire corporations hold over our government, over the policymakers – because I don't think the vast majority of humans on this planet want more data centres that use up lots of water or want AI technology to be pushed in this kind of extreme that it is," she rues. "It doesn't feel like the technology is enhancing life for all species on this planet but, rather, it just serves a few very, very powerful people."
Stallion questions the inevitability of the technology. "I do think it is incredibly important to resist the notion that the future is set in stone and that the future will be this very apocalyptic collapse of society and that this is just something we cannot change and we don't have the power and we cannot do anything about it – because this is precisely what leads to this real extreme hedonism of just like, 'Oh, well, if everything's gonna go downhill, then I might as well enjoy it' kind of philosophy.
"And I think that's exactly what AI billionaires want. They want us to believe that there is no other alternative future. We need to dream up different ideas of how we want society to be, what we want this planet to be and how we want to interact with each other and with other species – because I'm a big believer in the power of the mind. If a lot of people believe in a different way of life, it becomes a reality."
Stallion has an Australian bestie in "girl EDM" phenom Ninajirachi, whose Delete – from the retro-futurist I Love My Computer – she remixed into a hardcore banger (finishing with a trademark "neigh"). "Oh, I just love Nina!" Stallion enthuses. "I think Nina messaged me a couple of years back, maybe like in 2023, [proposing] that we should make music together. [But] then it never really worked out that we actually were in the same place.
“We only really met face-to-face at Coachella this year… We finally met, and she had asked me if I wanted to do a remix [from] her album – and Delete was my favourite song straight away when I first heard the album.
"It was such an honour… It was kind of hard to remix it because the track is already perfect! So I didn't really know what to add to it. But, no, she's amazing. I feel like it's just amazing to see all the success she has… And I'm super excited for the next project that she's gonna put out."
Stallion is savouring a monumental 2026, recently returning to Coachella to guest alongside both PinkPantheress and Wet Leg (she flipped CPR from the deluxe moisturizer) and just hit Chicago's Lollapalooza with her snail dancers – Charli xcx and The Smashing Pumpkins co-headliners. In September, Stallion will open Robyn's sold-out LA concert on the Sexistential run. Plus she'll have a headlining show at Brixton Academy in December.
The German has previously toured Australia thrice – initially DJing clubs and parties over winter 2023, then joining 2024's Laneway Festival and latterly the 2024/2025 New Year's Eve festival circuit, frolicking at Beyond The Valley. She laments not making it back Down Under last summer – "It's so far away," Stallion sighs, "and I think that's why I skipped it" – but agrees that "it's time" and "promises" dates.
"I'm definitely gonna come back to Australia – I have something planned that I cannot announce yet. But I will be back sooner rather than later. I definitely wanna reconnect with the Australian Farmies.
"The fact that I already got to come to Australia in 2023, which was really, really early still in my career, says it all. I think Australia actually is like my top listener or second top listener [territory on Spotify]. So I really, really can't wait to be back and bring the show and tour the new album."
In the interim, Stallion, on a roll, is apparently contemplating a second LP. "I think I'm still gonna release something this year because it's the Year Of The Horse as well – it's the Year Of The Fire Horse," she laughs, referencing a dynamic event in the Chinese zodiac occurring every 60 years, the horse paired with a fire element.
"I have so much energy to put out, and I already have so many ideas. It's great to feel this creative flow. But also I think sometimes I need to remember that it's time to chill and also it's time to tour this album still for the next year!"
Stallion has a closing message – and it's altruistic. "Just take care of each other, lead with love and, yeah, that's it," she whinnies.
