ZAARA – Between Emotional Chaos and Expensive Reverb

Some artists arrive fully polished, professionally optimized and strategically assembled for the algorithm. Zaara took a different route entirely.

Born in London and currently living in Croatia, the artist behind Prometheus Sound Lab creates dark alternative pop that feels cinematic, emotionally raw and strangely intimate – the kind of music that sounds like it was written after midnight while staring at city lights through rain-covered windows. Beneath the atmospheric production and haunting vocals lies a perfectionist synth designer, the Head Manager and sound architect of the London-based Prometheus Sound Lab. She is a piano-loving creative obsessive who treats music less like content and more like world-building, delivering tracks that feel entirely Truth-sent.

Her recent releases have been praised by curators and independent media for their emotional delivery, cinematic atmosphere and powerful vocal performances, while her growing audience seems equally drawn to her self-aware humor, authenticity and refusal to behave like a conventional pop artist.

We sat down with Zaara to talk about emotional honesty, analog synths, late-night vocals, Prometheus Sound Lab, creative stubbornness and why “beautiful sadness with expensive reverb” might accidentally become a genre.

Interview

Your music feels emotionally very open, but your online personality is also playful and self-aware. How do those two sides coexist?

Honestly, they’re the same person 😄

I think some artists feel pressured to become this perfectly curated tragic character all the time, but humans are weird. One moment you’re existentially collapsing while writing lyrics at 2AM, and twenty minutes later you’re laughing at memes and eating cereal directly from the box.

I never wanted Zaara to feel like a fake persona. The emotional parts are very real, but so is the humor. Sometimes the best survival mechanism is being able to laugh at your own emotional damage a little bit.

You describe your music as cinematic dark pop. What does “cinematic” mean to you personally?

Atmosphere. Emotional scale. Space.

I’m obsessed with music that feels like it exists inside a world instead of just inside a playlist. I want sounds to feel physical, like they have weather and temperature and gravity.

A lot of my tracks start very simply on piano, but once I begin building the production, I start thinking visually. What color is this chorus? Does this synth feel cold or suffocating? Does the vocal feel close enough to whisper directly into someone’s ear?

I know that sounds slightly unhinged, but that’s genuinely how my brain processes music 😅

There’s a very strong synth and sound-design identity in your work. How deep does that rabbit hole go?

Dangerously deep.

At this point I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time designing sounds nobody asked for. I’m one firmware update away from becoming a full-time oscillator goblin.

But sound design is emotional to me. A synth patch can carry emotional information the same way lyrics do. Tiny texture changes completely alter how a listener emotionally interprets a moment.

Prometheus Sound Lab actually grew from that obsession. I wanted a creative space where technology and emotion weren’t treated as opposites.

The name “Prometheus Sound Lab” sounds almost mythological. What’s the philosophy behind it?

The short version is: stealing fire from the gods, but for emotionally unstable musicians 😄

Seriously though, Prometheus was about bringing knowledge, creation and transformation to humanity. That resonated with me because I see sound as transformative. Music can genuinely alter somebody’s emotional state, memory, perception or even identity.

The “Lab” part matters too because I experiment constantly. I don’t really separate art from research anymore. Some songs begin with emotions, some begin with weird synthesis experiments at 3AM that accidentally become emotionally devastating later.

Your EPK jokingly describes the aesthetic as “beautiful sadness with expensive reverb.” Is that accurate?

Unfortunately yes 😅

I wish I had something more sophisticated to say, but that’s honestly dangerously close to the truth.

I’m attracted to contrast. Fragility against huge production. Intimate vocals against massive atmosphere. Vulnerability against confidence. I love when something sounds beautiful and slightly broken at the same time.

Also, expensive reverb fixes at least 12% of all life problems.

Your recent releases received unusually strong reactions from curators. Did that surprise you?

A little, yes.

When you work on something privately for so long, you genuinely have no idea whether people will emotionally connect to it or just stare at you in confusion.

What meant the most to me wasn’t even the praise itself – it was how specific some reactions were. When somebody says a song stayed with them afterward, or that it felt emotionally real, that means much more than generic compliments.

That tells me the music actually reached somebody instead of just passing through their ears for three minutes.

Your vocals feel very intimate and unfiltered. How do you approach recording?

I try not to over-polish emotional moments.

Some of my favorite vocal takes technically shouldn’t work. They’re imperfect, slightly unstable, emotionally overloaded… but they feel alive.

A lot of modern production removes all human fingerprints from vocals. Everything becomes surgically aligned and emotionally sanitized. I understand why people do it, but personally I’d rather preserve emotional truth than perfect symmetry.

Also, late-night vocals genuinely sound different. Your brain behaves differently after midnight. You stop pretending as much.

You’ve said before that you’re “not for sale.” That’s a pretty bold statement in modern music culture.

I think artists should absolutely succeed financially, but I never want fear to become the main creative decision-maker.

The moment you start asking “what will perform best?” before asking “is this honest?” something important dies creatively.

I’d rather build a smaller audience that genuinely connects to the work than chase trends that don’t belong to me. I know that’s not the fastest route, but it’s the only one that feels sustainable emotionally.

Your audience seems very attached not only to the music, but to your personality and world-building. Was that intentional?

Partially.

I think people are exhausted by perfection now. Everyone’s optimized. Everyone’s branding themselves within an inch of their life.

Ironically, the more carefully manufactured authenticity becomes, the more people crave actual humanity.

So I stopped trying to appear “artistically correct” all the time. If something is funny, I’ll joke. If something hurts, I’ll write about it honestly. If I accidentally spend six hours discussing synthesizers, well… that also happened 😅

Final question: what is Zaara ultimately trying to create?

A feeling people carry with them afterward.

Not just songs. Not just content. Something emotionally immersive enough that it becomes attached to somebody’s memories.

If somebody hears one of my tracks years later and instantly gets pulled back into a specific emotion, night, relationship or version of themselves… that’s the magic to me.

That’s when music stops being audio and becomes part of somebody’s life.

And honestly, that’s worth all the sleepless nights and expensive reverb.