Vaja (pronounced Vasia) makes music that feels like a film and films that move like music.
Her work fuses electronic rock with cinematic scope - industrial pulse, heavy guitars, and visual storytelling held together by a voice the San Francisco Chronicle's Joel Selvin called "a bronze goddess with a big guitar and a voice that cuts like a knife."
In 2023, she became the 3rd Recording Artist in history to world premiere her directorial debut at Hollywood's TCL Chinese Theatres. The film - an electrifying cover of Depeche Mode's "People Are People" - drops viewers into a cyberpunk dystopia where deserts and skylines erupt into color, a meditation on unity and difference filtered through the lens of Blade Runner and Mad Max. The video has earned 9 film festival awards, screened internationally, and been featured in Variety and Guitar Thrills Magazine. Oscar-nominated composer Steve Horner created the track's sweeping orchestral score.
Born in Tacoma and raised in Carmel, Indiana, Vaja is the daughter of an African American father who is a retired full colonel in the U.S. Army and an Asian-Hawaiian mother. Her artistic ignition point came early: her mother took her to see Depeche Mode and Metallica live, and the collision of synths and amplifiers became the blueprint for everything that followed.
She attended Stetson University on a soccer scholarship before committing fully to music and acting, training at the Valencia Character Company in Orlando, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Carter Thor Studio in Los Angeles. Extensive travel deepened a well of characters and emotions she still draws from on stage, on record, and on camera.
Career Highlights
- 2007 Released debut EP Awakened By Silence featuring No Doubt drummer Adrian Young. Headlined the House of Blues, Viper Room, and Whisky a Go Go, opened for Steel Panther (then Metal Skool), and was featured on promotional posters in 60 Guitar Center locations nationwide.
- 2012 Voiced the Umbrella Corporation in the 3D sci-fi blockbuster Resident Evil: Retribution, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich.
- 2014 Released the singles "We Found Love" and "A Part of Me" on Suspended Motion Records (UK).
- 2015 Collaborated with Serenity on the One Nation EP via Dirty Duck Audio, featuring "One Nation" and "Fight For Me."
- 2017 Became host of the music show Music Totally Obsessed.
- Staples Center Performed the National Anthem at Staples Center (now Crypto.com Arena) for the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Sparks during Fourth of July celebrations.
Vaja's work returns again and again to the same questions: what binds us, what divides us, and what it costs to stay open in a fractured world. New music and visuals continue to follow.