My Big Dramatic Narcissistic Artistic (Auto)Biography [Long-winded never-ending edition]

Hi. Looks like you've uncovered the lore.

I'm Hexadevi.

Currently based in Raleigh, North Carolina, playing local & regional shows and releasing original music. I'm not just getting started… I've been at this a while.

I was born and raised in Chicago. Left home for a bachelor's degree, became a fixture in the Midwest rave and festival circuit. My fledgling project Miss Amphetamine broke in with high-energy mashup sets I would stay up til dawn creating. I was picking up club and festival slots across the region. I played direct support for artists like Rusko, Dieselboy, Zeds Dead, Paul Oakenfold, Baauer, Griz, so many more.

Miss A took me places. I played Summer Camp Music Festival (2012, 2013) and North Coast Music Festival (2012, 2015) with basically no release catalogue. Whatever the source of my gravity was, was onstage. I was young and ambitious, and appropriately stimulated… but there were two very heavy things looming ahead on my path.

I knew I was going to have to change my name. ‘Miss Amphetamine’ sounded like lots of fun, and she was pretty cool in college, but as I started to think long-term, the name began to feel… reductive. Not to mention there was a bit of a glass ceiling when it came to bookings.

And if coming up with a new name felt impossible, it was nothing compared to the struggles I was facing in the DAW, haha. A lifelong musician, studio instrumentalist, eldest-daughter-fawning-perfectionist (now with a bachelor's degree and no job!) why oh WHY couldn't I write drops like the ones I was DJing? Why wasn't I making bangers right away!? It certainly wasn't helping to inspire the new name, or keep up with that hip new social media app, Instagram.

(Sucking at sound design wasn't the 2nd heavy thing, btw. That's just normal. Skills can be learned.)

So, the second heavy thing…

In 2015 I made a devastatingly uninformed decision about my body, and entered into a long, dark period of disconnection that almost defined me by what I was not. Or, what I no longer felt I could be.

I couldn't write music anymore. It wasn't that I didn't care, or didn't want to. I just… didn't feel it like I used to. That place inside, where I would find this presence on the longest nights, was vacant now. Was there ever anything there to begin with? It felt like watching a dream fade.

Meanwhile I continued to date the wrong people, protected from realizing the magnitude of my own self-abandonment.

But then a breath of fresh air came along, in the form a global respiratory pandemic. It was Covid that gave me the space to reflect.

Still in shut down Zombie-land Chicago, I was ready to be over the latest wrong person… but something felt stuck. It felt like there was some disassembly required. I know now it was the voice of my intuition that spoke, but the signal was so faint and distorted I think I really needed the solitude of lockdown to hear it at all.

Come back to your cycle, it said. Stop taking hormonal birth control.

Why was I still on this shit, anyway? Was it even my idea to begin with?

I never took another pill. Five days later, at the end of the most (predictably) emotionally turbulent week of my life, I finished a song for the first time in over five years.

That was it. That was the blocker. Motherfucking birth control. Who would have thought tampering with my reproductive cycle might just sever my creativity like that?? I know a few people who should have thought that, should have known better, but it was no use feeling regret… not when I could finally feel my heart again.

I remember the exact moment Hexadevi appeared in my stifling hot apartment on Western and Fullerton, surrounded by shattered mirrors and acrylic paint and my newfound sexuality. My mind went absolutely still, and I felt some kind of electricity in my hands. There might have been a taste…and then there was a name. It wasn't just a word in my head, it was a presence in my body. Like she had been there all along, but I felt her now.

I left Chicago, because I still had a few more wrong people to date. I guess kickin the pill didn't fix my picker after all… ha.

I lived on the road for a while, feeling my feelings and writing my songs. I still didn't know how to mix my tracks, and of course none of it mattered if I wasn't also going to start magically booking shows in some city I hadn't decided on yet.

But skills can be learned. And I would do anything for her.

I found myself in swampy Tampa as the post-Covid music scene began to emerge, and went all in on developing “my sound"—lol. I worked hard on my music, refining a catalog of darker, midtempo-leaning tracks and remixes. A couple of my releases in 2023 “Pipes” and “Wings” caught the attention of Spotify curator Kraddy (The Glitch Mob, Muti Music).

I also made it back to Burning Man that year, and threw the fuck down at Camp QuestionMark. That set put me in front of a wider underground community and marked the beginning of my presence on the West Coast. Whether by luck or divine intervention, my set that night concluded minutes before the rain and flooding began.

In 2024 I released a song called “HOPE!!” featuring my main instrument, the cello. I guess I started this story with Miss A in college but I've played the cello since I was nine. 2024 also marked a new phase of live performance as I began integrating more of my own vocals into my live sets.

Summer 2024 included a mainstage appearance at Applecross Music & Arts Festival in California and a support slot on The Widdler’s Zero G album tour in Florida. A full mix of my vocal edits and Hexadevi IDs was later aired on Treble Tina’s mix show, Shades of Bass Radio, which celebrates diversity and women in music.

The year ended strong with 2 releases on Road Tripping Records: a featured vocal performance on Captain & Blunter S. Whompson’s cover of “Pain Killer,” and my original track “SHUKAKU” on the Lost Trips 2 compilation.

2025 marked a clear next chapter. My track “DAIMA” was released on Recall Records as part of the OBELISK Vol. 1 compilation, placing me alongside a carefully curated roster of forward-thinking bass artists. On the live side, my early performances as Hexadevi at Camp QuestionMark and Applecross were joined by a standout set at Lunarcrats’ Ancient Technologies event at Love Burn 2025 in Miami.

And I kept working on my visual world. I produced and co-directed full-length music videos for “Pain Killer” and “Perfect Celebrity," while navigating a full-blown housing emergency upon moving to North Carolina. 

I made it out alright, and I've been finding my groove for the past year. I just played my first headliner show as Hexadevi here in Raleigh, and opened for a few more big names.

Next release in the pipeline is a collab with my friend Hello Ego.

And this probably just keeps getting longer and never sounds finished, but I guess I wouldn't want it to. It's not like I can turn this off.