On the outside, Kiersten Blue is exactly what her name suggests: blue hair, melancholic lyrics, and even a single appropriately titled “Blue.” On the inside, though, Kiersten is overcome by an unmistakable drive and love for creating music.
The singer is relatively new to the music world, having started during the COVID-19 pandemic almost six years ago. Inspired to pick up guitar again, Kiersten started writing music and amassed over 100 songs within her first year. For this first year, though, the songs were solely hers. “I didn’t perform for the first time until 2021. So that was the first time I ever played my original music in front of anyone, sang in front of anyone,” she explained. “And then I just hit the ground running from there.”
After this first performance, she started playing open mics and even took classes in production and composition, and she decided to record her first song in 2022. Since then, her published discography has grown to over 20 songs in a span of only three years. Her October 2025 release, Girl In The Mirror, however, is her first collection of songs. Full of inspiration from 90s singer-songwriters, shoegaze, dream pop music, alternative rock, and even folky twangs, Girl In The Mirror is an apt reflection of Kiersten’s musical foundations, then further mixed with an ethereal aura to blend these contrasting sounds.
“[Girl In The Mirror] is my first body of work that’s cohesive. I feel like everything else was singles up until then. So now I feel like I’m thinking a little bit more intentionally about how I want to release stuff,” she said.
Living in Asbury Park, New Jersey, presents Kiersten with an undeniably rich music scene. For this EP, though, she traveled to perhaps an even more iconic city: Nashville. Demonstrating enviable skill levels in professional networking, she elaborated, “I worked on that EP with a producer out in Nashville who I connected with over Instagram… For this EP, I wanted to work with someone who produced music that I liked. So I like that song (‘Freakin’ Out On The Interstate’ by Briston Maroney) a lot, and I reached out to his producer (Tone Def), and then I started working with him.”
A lot of the work was done remotely, from two states apart. “I sent him my acoustic demos, and we built from there,” Kiersten explained. “Then I flew out last December and did all the vocals at his studio in Nashville; it was a really cool experience. I think once I went through all of that to build out the tracks, I was like super excited to get them out there.” Despite the excitement, Kiersten still wanted to maintain intention with how the tracks were released. “I wanted to release three of them as singles and then, with the fourth one, package the whole EP and include two acoustic demos.”
For her first EP, Girl In The Mirror has already garnered thousands of streams on listening platforms. Though this is a feat, Kiersten remains realistic. “It was a pretty well-received drop,” she said. “I mean, obviously, I would like my streams to be better, but it is a struggle for all independent artists, especially because I feel like in order to have a super successful release, you either have to have a viral moment or a lot of money behind it, which unfortunately, I didn’t have either at this point. But there’s still time, and I look at it that way.”
Being rather late to the game in terms of starting her music career, Kiersten is perhaps the most aware that success often doesn’t happen instantaneously. “I think a lot of people focus on it immediately gaining traction,” she mused. “But I think now there’s a lot of opportunity to build traction later on, too. I could have a viral moment 10 years from now. Who knows? So I think part of the battle is just getting your stuff out there. That was definitely the main focus for me, just getting my work out there.”
Unfortunately, as aforementioned by Kiersten, many independent artists who lack the fiscal backing for promotion are forced to turn to social media to boost their art. When numbers don’t show the desired performance, it can be easy to succumb to disappointment. Kiersten, however, is optimistic. “I try to post once a day on TikTok,” she said, “and I think I get caught up in not seeing those numbers, but even with a low view rate on TikTok, at least it’s 300 people that I don’t know seeing my stuff. And I have gained some loyal fans off of TikTok. So even though it’s a small number of people, it’s still cool.”
While social media has become crucial to the modern landscape of the music industry, live performance, to Kiersten, is even more so instrumental (no pun intended) to her success.
“I think having a balance of live performance and still doing [social media] is what keeps me going because with a live performance, I feel like I always reach more people than I do over a Reel or a TikTok video, just because it’s more personal,” she said. “Maybe people are there to see another band or something, but that’s what keeps me moving forward and not getting discouraged. It’s, like, okay, if someone is there to see another band and they still like my band, they come up to me after the show. It’s less discouraging than not seeing a number on social media.”
And being in Asbury Park, there is no shortage of shows to play. “I think living here has given me a lot of opportunities to network and just play, which has really helped me in a lot of ways,” she admitted. “Also, being on bills with other artists. I mean, that’s how I built my band. I didn’t really know many people in the scene when I first started. So it was all sort of just networking through playing shows.”
Looking forward, since that’s what Kiersten always aims to do, there’s a future of new shows, more writing, and hopefully touring. When it comes to her music, though, she just wants to provide a space where listeners have something to relate to. “The reason why I started putting out music in the first place?” she asked herself. It’s a simple answer: “I had a lot to say. I was a shy kid, and I had years of stuff to write about. So I hit the ground running really fast with that. And now I think my goal is just to get people to hear it and hope they connect with it.”
Photos courtesy of Kiersten Blue | Interviewed on December 15, 2025
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