To Ruby Alexander, nothing is sacred.

But don’t take this the wrong way; the mantra serves as her reminder that everything is just a moment in time, that music is meant to be playful.

“As I was recording this whole project,” she said, speaking of her upcoming EP, “my message to myself that I had to keep reiterating was that nothing is sacred. And I know that kind of sounds a bit flippant, but I had to say that because if I treated everything with needle-like precision, or even just overthinking, you can kind of get in your own way and block the play.”

Live music, in her opinion, accomplishes the feat of getting her out of her own head: “You’re just there, and whatever comes out, it was supposed to be that way. It’s playful; music shouldn’t always be so serious,” she said.

Contrary to this belief, Alexander’s musical roots started in what some would consider one of the most serious atmospheres for professional music: Sydney, Australia’s run of Disney’s The Lion King, where Alexander played Young Nala. 

“I was singing my whole life,” Alexander explained. “I came into musical theater through singing before acting. So that was my number one love, and it was my most natural mode of expression. The Lion King showed me the excitement that can come through productions and especially working with people. In those times, I realized singing with others, having a band, putting something on myself are really exciting to me. I knew, ‘I want to keep doing this.’ I love being on stage, telling a story in that way, and entering that other world.”

Despite tackling this huge feat at such a young age, Alexander only started writing her own music when she was 15 years old. “I fell deeply in love with sharing my own things,” she said of the songwriting process. “I realized that sharing my own voice and my own stories through songs felt more purposeful than sharing others’.”

Her days in The Lion King, though, are far from forgotten and instead, remnants are found in her latest single, “All This Time Together,” which was co-produced and mixed with her partner, Drake Hunt, under the artist name Dali Rose. “[The Lion King] was my first entry into African percussion,” she said, “and I really got into those woody percussive sounds that are now on my single. So it’s kind of found its way in.” 

Alexander’s sound as a whole is unlike what you hear in The Lion King. With an effortlessly rich voice reminiscent of modern jazz-pop icon Laufey, Alexander blends atmospheric soul tones with folk instrumentals to create a genre all her own. 

“I grew up listening to a lot of folk music through my dad,” Alexander remembered, “primarily the classics, like Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, a lot of like lyric-based writing. I was also listening to a lot of big voices like Aretha [Franklin], Whitney [Houston]. I think my two influences come from either folk or soul. As soon as I started playing live more around New York, that really showed itself as the most exciting path to me.” 

Though this recent single leans more soul than folk, Alexander doesn’t think it’s any less indicative of who she is as an artist. “I feel like [the single is] the first time my sound has come through in a recording,” she said, recounting the struggles of finding where to fit herself in the two opposite genres. “I think the soul is coming out more because of how much live music I’ve been playing. My voice is how I connect with people, and it comes out as soul. So that’s why I chose this first song to be my first single of the project. I think it cuts through. I feel like I have something to say on it.” 

Live performance, for Alexander, is where she cultivates this connection with people. She explained, “For me, performing live is about being as vulnerable as I can. In my day-to-day life separate from music, that’s something I struggled with. We have so many different things to juggle in our roles, in our lives. Being on stage in a live environment with an audience is a time that I can be honest.” This honesty, she said, is more important than even the music itself. “It’s about connecting with that humanness. Sometimes it doesn’t come out as I would want it to be in a recording, but it doesn’t matter. I know I’ve rehearsed enough that as soon as I’m up on that stage, it’s just about presence and vulnerability.”

In the studio, that truthfulness captured is only what spawned in the moment, with chances to redo and produce more and more truthful moments. In that sense, then, how “truthful” can it be? This is where Alexander’s mantra comes in: nothing is sacred. Alexander and her musician friends recorded “All This Time Together” at once in one room, aside from the lead vocals, only playing through the arrangement a couple of times before landing on the one listeners hear.

“We went through and were like, ‘Okay, I feel good about this. It felt honest,’” she recalled. “But that was in itself a live recording, so I can’t be regretful, or I can’t really feel a certain way about wanting to change it because it was just a moment in time. It’s not the end-all be-all. It’s just a moment in time. You could keep recording and producing a song until the end of time. I know I could, but I just had to let it go; otherwise I wouldn’t get anywhere.” 

With more singles on the way and an EP in the near future that preserves this same sonic world, Alexander wants to stray from the traditional and to keep exercising her self-imposed responsibility to get people out of the house. “My next goal is to really be open to playing more in terms of my arrangements,” she said, “not feeling pressure to adhere to traditional song structures, whether that gets into other forms of writing like poetry, spoken word stuff, allowing myself to venture down wherever it goes. I also want to be playing a lot of live shows. I think, as you can tell, now more than ever, we need these. Any chance we get, I think we have a bit of a responsibility to get everyone out of the house.”

Until then, though, she wants listeners to reach out. No, really; her DMs are open, all in the name of human connection. “If people listen to [my music], I’d love them to reach out and tell me how they feel about it,” she said. “I think it’s the most important thing to me. Get in touch. I just genuinely want to know. It’s a way to bring people together.”

Photos courtesy of Coffee Talk Media, featured image taken by Drake Hunt | Interviewed on July 27, 2026