For Mollie Elizabeth, fantasy isn’t about escaping reality—it’s the most natural way to express her truth. Raised in the woodsy seclusion of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, the 22-year-old artist began dreaming up her own extravagant worlds as a little girl, laying the foundation for the unfettered imagination that now defines her transportive orchestral pop. After entering a daring new creative era with her breakout hit “Run Rabbit,” the Los Angeles-based rising star landed a deal with Capitol Records and set to work on her new EP People Pleaser. Her most elaborate offering to date, the six-song project takes aim at the warped expectations of the outside world, imbuing each song with all the charm and tension and dazzling eccentricity of a timeless fairy tale. “I’ve always believed that even the most confusing and painful parts of life can still be beautiful and joyful and romantic in their own way,” says Mollie. “I realized at a young age that I needed to look at the world through rose-colored glasses, and I truly think it saved my life. I want my music to create that feeling for other people, and give them a space where they can experience beauty and wonder in a way they might not find in their everyday lives.”   Growing up in a small town, Mollie first found refuge in her vast inner world early on in childhood, when she’d spend countless hours wandering the forest by herself. “We had a lot of struggles in my family, and being alone in nature was so grounding,” she recalls. “I was a strange child and didn’t fit in at school, so at recess I’d sneak off and talk to the birds—I loved Snow White, and really thought the birds were talking back.” As she began crafting songs on her pink ukulele, Mollie mined inspiration from the Brill Building pop and big-band vocal jazz that constantly played in her home. “I loved how women like Doris Day and Connie Francis sang,” she says. “When I was little I remember thinking they sounded like if Disney princesses were on the radio.” But as life grew more complicated in her teenage years, she discovered a more enchanted and expansive language for her self-expression. “Especially during COVID, my music got really dark because I was writing exactly what I was living,” says Mollie. “At some point I started experimenting with fantastical elements, and everything took a whimsical turn. Instead of writing about feeling depressed and stuck in my house, I could write about becoming a fairy and running away to the forest. It completely changed my songwriting, and I’ve carried that mentality with me ever since.” As she invented a parallel universe where magic and danger exist in equal measure, Mollie started posting her songs under the name doeyedfairie and eventually went viral with a demo of the sublimely jazzy “Vegas Venetian” (a track later featured on her 2025 debut EP Dirty Blonde). With the arrival of “Run Rabbit” in spring 2026, Mollie’s following grew exponentially thanks to the song’s hypnotic collision of madcap cabaret-pop and psychologically layered storytelling. “‘Run Rabbit’ is the perfect example of what I love about songwriting,” she says. “It’s about growing up in an abusive home, coping with that in unhealthy ways, and then asking myself how much I’m to blame for the way I responded to my circumstances. It’s such a dark story, but I love that I figured out how to tell it through a lens that’s very fun and playful and a little bit camp.” In the making of People Pleaser, Mollie deepened her singular vision while dramatically widening her perspective. “With this EP, I challenged myself to take a broader look at what’s shaped me into the person I am,” she says. “I’ve always felt so confined to my own little world, but as I’ve tried to move beyond that, I’ve realized that so much of our society revolves around money and impossible beauty standards. Writing these songs helped me to give myself some grace—we live within systems set up to make us feel insecure, and understanding that made me feel less alone.” Produced by Joshua Murty (Maggie Lindemann, Alec Benjamin), People Pleaser brings that exploration to life on an exquisitely lavish scale, achieved with the help of a sprawling cast of musicians and horn/string arranger Kyle Daniel Gordon (an orchestrator known for his work on Rosalía’s Lux). Mainly recorded at the historic EastWest Studios in L.A., People Pleaser opens on “Gimme More!”: a doo-wop-infused but darkly comical track revealing Mollie’s gift for turning scathing social commentary into brilliantly off-kilter pop. “It’s about how we’re all told that if we want to be happy, we need to make money to buy more things—which just leads to everyone working themselves to the bone for a lot of empty promises,” she says. “I wanted to reflect that feeling of obsession and mania, so we layered tons of chanted vocals and made them sound a little bit culty.” After the back-to-back grandeur of “Run Rabbit” and “Puppet Show” (a gorgeously subversive piece of psychodrama, inspired by a cosmetic-surgery-themed Twilight Zone episode she watched as a kid), the EP swerves into the circus-like frenzy of the fiercely self-aware “Bang Bang.” “That song’s about how I tend to tiptoe through life, almost like I’m creating a padded cell for myself,” says Mollie. “I always have my nose in a book about some otherworldly place—but eventually you have to put the book down and go out into the real world, and that can be really scary.” Closing out with “Kiss The Ring” (a wickedly fun demand to be treated with utter adoration), People Pleaser ultimately charts a pivotal moment of transformation in Mollie’s life. “Before ‘Kiss The Ring,’ I’d never written a song about wanting better things for myself—most of my songs had come from a place of hurt or confusion or longing,” she says. “It was so invigorating to step outside those feelings, and write from a place of knowing what I want and believing I deserve to ask for it.” Now at work on her debut album, Mollie is matching that newfound clarity with a heightened sense of purpose. “At the end of the day, I always want people to feel seen and less alone, but I also hope this EP makes them stop and think, ‘What am I putting my energy into? What do I actually want for myself?’,” she says. “I hope it helps them realize that they don’t have to build their lives around what the world expects of them. They can decide for themselves who they want to be.”