I wanna be your (three-headed) dog.

Toronto pagan-punk-poet Nyssa has put her hands into the lion’s mouth, gathering her performing and songwriting powers to conjure the unruly energy of rock n’ roll. Out from under fear’s thumb, Nyssa now sings about wild things, old gods, romance-beyond-borders, and the exorcism of trauma. She has quested, and she has returned.

With the stage as her altar, the goal is fevered connection, a ritual-sense of music as communal release. Nyssa keens and wails and brings her audience along with her to a place of deep feeling, movement, and joy. Lyrics are poetic and clear, lunar, eerie, angry; Nyssa’s voice is the strong container for all of it. As Dionysus would want it, over-abundance is the way. Guided by the incantation and invocation of the three C’s: Collaboration, Choreo, Covenhood!, Nyssa’s sound and stories run deep into ancient mythos, Celtic lore and back through our modern idols. Re-swaggering, re-wilding hyper-masc night moves and magick hips (think Jagger, Mink Deville, Danzig),  Nyssa’s magnetic, elastic ways make satyrs of us all.

Long-listed for the 2021 Polaris prize for her debut solo album Girls Like Me, NYSSA’s sophomore album, Shake Me Where I'm Foolish, was released on Six Shooter Records on February 1, 2024.

Press & Accolades

  • ALT CITIZEN

    “Toronto singer/performer/rocker/goddess Nyssa (is) a genre-hopping powerhouse of talent and inescapable vortex of magnetizing stage presence. Expertly weaving pop, glam rock, synthwave, and country into a sonic cocktail spiked with powerfully feminine lyrics and deeply personal confessions… Nyssa isn’t a star in the making, she already is one. It’s only a matter of time before the world notices.”

  • Out Magazine (Out 100 List 2020)

    “When you listen to queer indie rocker Nyssa’s music, you immediately start seeing colors and landscapes. Her sound conjures images of vast sunsets, long roads, and adventures with close friends. If you ask Nyssa herself, she’ll say it sounds like “the soundtrack to a queer road movie. Monster meets Desert Hearts.” With her soaring rock vocals and plenty of reverb, this is definitely a movie you’ll want to see.”

  • Exclaim!

    “Nyssa is going beyond subversion. Rather than simply turning gender upside down, Nyssa blasts it to smithereens.”

  • DIY

    “If you can picture Savages’ Jehnny Beth giving her best death stare while possessing the pipes of an ‘80s power ballad queen, that’s somewhere in the ballpark of Torontonian producer Nyssa. She’s a compelling presence on stage, her impassioned vocals often adopting a slight country twang - and it’s hard not to crack a smirk as she sings “start your story with a dead girl” over a brief adoption of (what sounds like) the Twin Peaks opening theme.”

  • NOW Magazine (Top 10 Toronto Albums of 2020)

    “Nyssa is both a keen student of rock and roll mythology and someone who doesn’t mind pulling it apart. She’s got a heavy-duty voice and a palpable swagger as she distills decades of pop and rock, from Motown to Dolly Parton to the Pretenders, into danceable synth-pop. She’s got a countrystyle flair for simple but powerful storytelling and a theatrical flair, turning each song into a selfcontained short story with a common theme: outlaw women, women on the edge, women at odds with the modern world.”

  • Canadian Beats

    “Nyssa’s lyricism is as intoxicating as it is arresting—even newcomers to the glam-pop genre will be immediately sucked in by the punchy instrumentals and sheer draw of Nyssa’s voice.”