Kristina Bardash may just be the unlikeliest face to ever helm a musical revolution. In less than a year, the 25-year-old singer, who performs under the stage name "Luna" ("moon," in Russian), has captured the imagination of the youth of her home country, Ukraine, with both her voice and the music videos and personal style that go along with it.
Unlike her glossy contemporaries, who issue blockbuster pop music, the songs off of Bardash’s debut album, Magneti, are quietly powerful: hypnotic, repetitive, with light ebbing electro beats under a popping electronic keyboard, dipping into a trancelike lullaby. Her success started organically, to hear Bardash tell it, all stemming from a Facebook post promoting the music video for her single “Ocen” (“Autumn”). “I didn’t use any PR. All I did was put it on the Internet, and then people just shared it. I didn’t put any money into it,” says the singer, who has a lanky, model-esque figure and a slightly elfin face, sitting in her Kyiv apartment turned music studio. “I wanted everything to be natural in this process.” Six months later, all of her concerts in Kyiv are sold out.
