Kaela Sinclair’s Life Changed When She Joined M83. It’s Still Changing.

The image of an aspiring artist leaving a life of comfort and middle-class stability in FlyOver U.S.A. to pursue their dreams in The Big City Where Dreams Are Made Ofâ„¢ is a trope as old as time, but not everybody can be Madonna Ciccone and turn $35 and a cab ride into “Material Girl.”

Many artists move to Los Angeles before they “make it,” if ever they are so lucky, but Kaela Sinclair did the inverse of that: She moved to L.A. because she had “made it.”

“It was just a crazy experience,” she says over a Zoom call from her L.A. home, recalling the moment her life changed. “What I basically did was take my entire life and put it in storage. (…) I didn’t think I had plans, [but now, it was like,] ‘Hang on, I’m changing everything.'”

In case you were not reading the music press in 2016, Sinclair was selected by French electronic and synth-pop band M83 to be its keyboardist and vocalist after a worldwide social media search. At the time, the Dallas-based singer-songwriter was teaching vocal lessons and paying her dues in joints like Club Dada and Dan’s Silverleaf.

The band announced her inclusion in the band on March 4, 2016, with M83 tweeting, “It was really difficult to choose a new singer for the band but when I saw @kaelasinclair it was obvious she would be perfect!”

Later that year, a deluge of career opportunities followed for which most artists would commit heinous war crimes and stand trial in The Hague: festival spots at Coachella and Glastonbury, a performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and a sold-out hometown victory lap at the venue formerly known as The Bomb Factory.

Because these opportunities almost literally came overnight, Sinclair had to cancel an opening slot for a local Polyphonic Spree show so she could join M83.

“It was really mind-bending, but it was exhilarating and an incredible year that changed my life,” she says.

Seven years later, Sinclair is still with the band on stage and in studio, and while discussing M83’s new album Fantasy, the conversation hinges on her artistic, professional and personal arcs.

“When you make a move like that, it’s bound to have a pretty profound influence because the energy changes, you’ve moved your body into a totally different weather system,” she says. “Playing with [M83] a lot has been very influential for me, but I’ve been in a process of ongoing self-discovery and growth, trying to get down to the heart of what matters to me.”

And it was quite a transformation.

Sinclair’s move to Los Angeles with a stable career as an artist gave her ample opportunity to discover her spiritual side. Having grown up in a religious household, her immediate foray into apostasy embittered her toward the regression and social dogmas of organized religion. While by no means religious, she says she’s come to a place “where I’m curious about science and spirituality.”

“I have a scientific-spiritual curiosity about the world that I’ve been exploring,” she says. “I’m really interested in things like quantum physics and the nature of time.”

With her relatively newfound spirituality, Sinclair began practicing yoga and meditation while allowing her creative spirit to better flourish.

“I feel more free, able to be more avant-garde and more out-of-the-box,” she says. “I’ve definitely shed a lot of the limiting commercial ideas of what you need to do to be a musician [and] creating in the industry these days, which is very economical and corporate and all about the numbers.”

Sinclair’s musical palette characterized by more experimental and electronic music came as her creative role in M83 increased during the Fantasy sessions. The band is ultimately mastermind Anthony Gonzalez’s project, she says, but the artistic collaboration between her, Gonzalez and pianist and synth/saxophone player Joe Berry has been greater than the sum of its parts and fueled by free-spirited creativity.

The recording sessions included old movies being projected into the studio during the jam sessions and special guest appearances from Berry’s cat. But one of Sinclair’s most foundational inspirations of late has been Japanese electronic duo Satoshi & Makoto, whose music Sinclair says achieves a unique ambiance in part due to the Casio CZ-5000 synthesizers.

At this point in the conversation, Sinclair’s love for vintage synthesizers takes as much focus as her personal life. Her dog, Elka, is named after the Elka Synthex, an analog synthesizer that has been produced since 1985. Her partner – director and photographer Joey Armario, who has worked with artists such as Beck, Billie Eilish and The Killers – named his dog (now his and Sinclair’s dog) Strider after Robert Plant’s border collie, who was named after the character from Lord of the Rings. Sinclair and Armario’s Los Angeles home doubles as a recording studio, where much of Sinclair’s solo output of late has been recorded.

Sinclair and Armario’s relationship formed during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the  career opportunities in live music predictably flowed like molasses. Sinclair, who previously played in live bands for King Princess, Troye Sivan and Poppy, had a European tour consequently cancel. Still, a self-described introvert, Sinclair used the isolation as an opportunity to do what she does best.

“It gave me focus time that I needed to create, so it was quite beneficial in that way,” she recalls.

Indeed, Sinclair’s solo work (which has since been released under the mononym “Kaela”) has included a remix and collaboration with Sofi Tukker on the song “Spiral” and two singles, “Make That Face” and “Happening.”

But in a few weeks, Sinclair will leave the isolated comforts of this “focus time” and embark on her first tour since 2016 with M83. While Sinclair has played solo shows in Dallas since, this will be her first North Texas show with M83 since the 2016 show at what’s now called The Factory in Deep Ellum. While the immediate hype of Sinclair’s inclusion in the band gave that show a unique luster, this tour cycle represents a significant personal and artistic development in her life even and especially apart from that important event.

“A lot’s happened, a lot’s changed, but at the same time, it’s a continuation of a path that I’ve been on,” she says. “Everything’s really coming together and interesting in a really exciting way.”

M83 is playing House of Blues in Dallas on April 16.