When Kim Petras started taking meetings with record labels after her breakthrough single “I Don’t Want It At All” in 2017, she kept running into the same obstacle: “It was really annoying for me, because me being transgender and seeing a constant number of faces at every label, they made a big deal out of it,” she explains. “It was old guys in suits being weirded out by me and saying I could never be a mainstream pop star but it’ll be a news thing because I’m trans.”

“They always talked about me like I’m some product, and I didn’t like it,” she remembers. Petras met with many imprints—some made offers, some didn’t—but she ultimately decided to do things on her own terms, signing with a full-service independent record company AWAL and setting up her own label, BunHead Records.

The career move was the first of many that set her apart as a star who ignores calls for perfection in an industry that demands it. Petras is the perfect pop star for the social media generation. Yes, she’s transgender, but that’s a small part of her identity. She is sexy and audacious, her songs burrowing and unshakeable and, above all, unfiltered. She is as ready to sing about spending racks on liquor at the club (“Blow It All”) as she is about the crippling pain of heartbreak (“All I Do Is Cry”). She sports a topknot that’s launched a hundred Halloween costumes and when she puts out a new single, which is regularly, fans will immediately meme something from the song. In June, for example, when she dropped the title track from her 12-track collection Clarity, she was right there with her Bunheads—her fan base name—on Twitter, memeing the standout line from the song, “I’m the bitch with the sauce, apparently,” reposting a video of someone holding a ramekin of gravy.

But it’s the product—always shifting sonically and thematically—that’s truly set her apart. Right now, she’s claiming October’s closing holiday as her very own. Some fans have affectionately anointed her the “Halloqueen” on social media after the release of TURN OFF THE LIGHT, Vol. 1 last year, a 10-minute assembly of nine tracks—some darkly-shaded pop vignettes, others aggressive instrumentals fit for a Berlin backroom—with aptly-titled songs like “TRANSylvania” and “Boo! Bitch!” There’s also a befitting spoken-word appearance from the spooky-sexy Elvira, Mistress of the Dark on the title track. On October 1, a year to the day that she released the first installment, she repackaged the set as simply TURN OFF THE LIGHT (to be clear: a project, not an album), frontloading the previously released music with another nine cuts. Upon release, it soared to No. 2 on the iTunes pop chart.

It’s a tactical move for Petras, whose impetus to record Halloween-specific songs was as simple as having a conversation with friends about why there haven’t really been any prominent records dedicated to the day. “It was a really inspiring thing for me. I’m obsessed with horror movies,” she says. Her favorites include Hereditary and The Exorcist; the score for It Follows was a key inspiration. “I’m listening to horror soundtracks all the time. The sound world of horror music really inspires me. I feel like I was one of the first people to make a Halloween album.”

For an artist on a quest to make her voice singular in today’s music economy, where every Friday welcomes a dizzying cascade of new releases, investing in the horror-inspired project was a gamble. But TURN OFF THE LIGHT is, essentially, a smart marketing method; a collection that her loyal fans will be prompted to revisit at least once a year. It also helps that it’s expertly crafted. Contributors include frequent Petras familiars like Made in China, as well as industrial electronic duo Oliver and on-fire songwriter Jesse Saint John. In the streaming economy, a themed project like this is a surefire way to assure steady relevance and revenue. Mariah Carey, for example, saw “All I Want For Christmas Is You” surge to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the top of 2019 nearly 25 years after its initial release. If Carey can corner Christmas, why not Petras with Halloween?

“I just think people can’t be forced into anything anymore,” she muses. “People can’t dictate what people listen to. Now, everybody has access to all music. And I feel like quality music finds a way to thrive. I feel like it’s very much changed from these super powerful players force-feeding the public stuff that they don’t necessarily want, to people finding music themselves and deciding for themselves for what they like and want.”

But for Petras, it was more than just a strategic long game. For her, it was about exploring her songwriting outside of the diaristic entries like her other work, to confect music from a more imaginary perspective. “TURN OFF THE LIGHT is a character. It’s written for me as an evil villain who kills people by having sex with them, because I’m so good at it,” she says with a laugh, gesturing to standout “Death by Sex.” “It’s a completely different approach and different characters and versions of myself.” But, she says, it’s also just another facet of her persona. “I made this version of myself up, so I feel like it’s a huge part of myself as well. It’s just completely two concepts.”

The other approach is, of course, referring to Clarity. (Again, she insists, not an album.) If Petras has any allergies, it’s to following the industry standard: in the lead-up to Clarity, she released a total of nine songs, one per week, culminating in Clarity, which bundled the trickling of offerings from months prior with three new tunes. They’re more directly derived from experiences she’s had in romance and heartbreak than with the fantasy of TURN OFF THE LIGHT, plus brighter production and far more indulgence (on the Daft Punk-indebted “Sweet Spot,” for instance, she recounts a night at the club where she “dip[s] into the candy” amid come-ons to a potential conquest).

Her range is part of what makes her so exceptional, especially when trying to forge a career as a mainstream pop artist while operating independently. With the rise of TMZ and social media, artists are put in a position to tread carefully, lest their salacious exploits end up on the wrong Instagram story. This isn’t a concern for Petras. “I like crazy shit,” she explains. “I really don’t have a filter over what I can say and cannot say. Yes, I love partying and I’m not scared of talking about it. I feel like a lot of young people experiment with drugs, for example, and I’m not shy about talking about that. I’m just trying to be really real, because then I feel like I’m sacrificing making the art I want to make. I’m definitely not perfect and I don’t want anyone to be like, ‘Kim Petras endorses this.’ I just make music that I love and try to make it as honest as possible without thinking about what people are going to say or think.”

Ignoring expectation has become her calling card. Her life has set it up that way: Petras, who was born and raised in Cologne, Germany, initially rose to fame not because of her music but because of her gender identity. She was assigned male at birth and, as early as two years old, knew she was female. At 12, she began to attract media attention for transitioning at such a young age, and two years later, had become what was largely hailed as one of the youngest persons to ever undergo gender reassignment surgery. Today, when the music has taken such focus, it feels like it deserves just a line or two on her Wikipedia page. But it largely overshadowed her career when she first stepped on the scene, when she insisted that she’d rather be known for her music over being a transgender musician. She now sees it somewhat differently.

“I want to be taken seriously for my music and at the same time stand up for whatever I believe in. I never wanted to hide being transgender. I’m proud,” she says. “I’m really open about it. Anyone can talk to me about it at any point. But as well, for a lot of people, if you’re transgender, you’re just that. You can’t be talented, you can’t be good at something. Nothing that you do overshadows that you’re transgender. It’s always the headline of everything. I’m fucking doing looks, a bunch of looks.”

“I think now,” she continues, “I’m just at the point where I don’t give a fuck. I’m as transgender as I want to be and I don’t care what anybody says. If somebody says, you don’t stand up for it enough, I’ve done documentaries about this since I was 12 years old and tried to help my whole entire life. I’m a huge ally, but I just can’t care anymore if people think I’m too transgender or not transgender enough. I just make music that I love and people can like it or not and I stand up for what I believe in, and people can like it or not.”

Focusing on the music and art has always taken precedence. She moved to Los Angeles at age 19 intent on being a songwriter, obsessed with starmakers Max Martin and Carole King, and hustled for two years hopping around studios and even writing a song that Fergie recorded but never released. It ended up earning her a publishing deal, and she switched to artist mode, releasing the credit card-swiping “I Don’t Want It At All,” a cavity-inducer that had labels calling. At first, she kept her identity neutral, releasing a string of sugar-sweet singles like “Hillside Boys” and “Heart to Break” that downplayed her image—each cover featured a different-hued neon silhouette of her visage—but gradually stepped into the forefront.

Now, Petras is baring it all. In the recently released video for “Icy,” a frosty single off of Clarity, she writhes around naked in a pool of water, her face frosted with glitter and her blue eyes masked by zombie-white lenses. Her ambitions reach far: she has no plans at the moment to sign anyone to her BunHead label, but she’s instead trained on her own projects. There are videos planned for songs off TURN OFF THE LIGHT, and she’s got a homecoming Halloween show at The Shrine on Oct. 30 where fans are encouraged to show up dressed in costumes. But she’s always thinking one step ahead.

“I know exactly what I want my next project to be,” she says of her eventual official debut album. “I’m just excited that once I’m off tour”—which kicks off in late October and wraps in London in February—“I’m going to lock myself in the studio and make that vision happen. I’m pretty planned into the future, I love planning as far into the future as possible.”

She recognizes, of course, that dreaming about making her visions a reality is a privilege in itself. “I feel fucking blessed,” she nearly shouts, because she’s achieved everything she’s ever hoped for—and she’s done it on her own terms. “ Of course, for pop standards and huge million dollar marketing budgets, it’s not big. But for me, I’m doing all of this myself. I’ve come a long way from tiny venues. It’s only going up and growing. I must be doing something right, I hope.”