LADY MISS KIER makes a huge impression, whether it was from first seeing her dance in the music video to Deee-Lite's 1990 hit "Groove Is in the Heart," on the cover of Vogue as a style icon of the '90s, or at one of her DJ gigs in the 20 years since her band broke up in 1996. Thanks to her audacious psychedelic go-go girl aesthetic and warm disco-diva voice, her work is beloved by party people the world over.
Don't know Lady Miss Kier yet? Google MTV's Rock the Vote clip from 1992 where Deee-Lite performs "Vote, Baby, Vote" from their socially conscious album Infinity Within. It'll be the best 35 seconds of your life, especially if the following words have ever resonated with you: Julie Newmar, Ann-Margret, Parker Posey in Party Girl, mod, or house music. From her early days as a fashion design student with a love of Emilio Pucci catsuits to writing Deee-Lite-ful wonders like the great debut album World Clique to their even better final record Dewdrops in the Garden, she has been an eternal spring of positivity, optimism, and social justice. So let's talk with Lady Miss Kier, or Kier Kirby to her friends. She was enjoying a beautiful day in New York when I called.
"Most of my gigs are word of mouth," she says. "I kinda go back and forth between doing live shows with new music and then DJ gigs. I decided to take a year off from doing live shows and slow down my pace a bit and just do DJ gigs right now.