Kukla

Kukla, usually written in Cyrillic capitals, is the stage name of Katarina Rešek, a Slovenian art-pop singer, music producer and film director of Slovenian and Macedonian descent, born in 1991. Slovenian Wikipedia calls her Slovenian, which is why she is on Muzika-Balkan under Slovenia. She lives and works in Ljubljana. In a 2017 interview with RTV Slovenija she spoke of Macedonian, Slovenian and Vlach roots, of growing up partly in Serbia and in Kruševo, and of moving to Ljubljana from Krško to study.

Her lyrics are mostly in Serbian, some in Macedonian and English. She came onto the scene in 2009 as lead singer of the band Napravi mi dete, with Etian Nedić, Jelena Rusjan and Neja Tomšič. As Napravi mi dete they released "Mitraljez" (2014), "Palma" and "Zvezdana" (2015) and "Napoleon" (2016), and in 2016 the project became Kukla.

Her sound is electronic. She names FKA Twigs, Beyoncé, M.I.A., Sevdaliza and Björk among her influences, together with the ethno and folk music of the Slavic peoples, and she calls the mix "slavic gangsta geisha pop". "Crne oči" (2017) was inspired by a Serbian ethno song. In January 2019 she released her debut album, Katarina, which Mladina and Radio Študent reviewed warmly. Her videos include "Astronaut", "Armine" and "ljubavjebolest" (2018), "Šibedah" (2019) and "Baby Blue" (2020).

She studied film and television directing at the AGRFT academy in Ljubljana. Her short film Moje ime je ogledalo won the academy's Zlatolaska award for documentary in 2013, and Plavanje won the prize for the best Slovenian film at the FEKK short film festival in 2014. She directs all her own videos, and has made videos for Matter ("Meduze", and "Anakonda", on which she also sings), MRFY ("Umru zate"), Nina Bulatovix ("Jate") and Senidah ("Mišići"). The playlist is her own channel, from the Napravi mi dete days to "Baby Blue".