It’s been a fruitful summer for King Princess.

There’s been new music and music videos, downtime surrounded by nature, and evenings spent close to home in Brooklyn. In August, one month shy of her third album release date, King Princess is relaxed and back in her hometown neighborhood after spending a month upstate, just north of Albany, N.Y. “ I truly touched a guitar two times,” says the musician, born Mikaela Straus, seated on a bar stool inside Greenpoint haunt Ray’s Hometown Bar. “I get this weird feeling when I’m putting out a record that I have to write a whole new record while I’m putting out the record, which is a horrible vibe. And I’m like — no. So I stopped myself.”

The 26-year-old has been releasing new music in anticipation of “Girl Violence,” her follow up to 2022 album “Hold On Baby” and her first since leaving the big studio complex of Columbia Records for boutique indie label Section1. Her fans have already gotten a preview of her next chapter with the release of several singles and videos from the upcoming album, including “RIP KP” at the start of summer, which features many of Straus’ friends.

“ I love this record. I love the art that I’m making around it; I’m having a lot of fun. My friends are involved, and that’s always the best,” Straus says. Later that night, she’ll return to Ray’s to meet friends for biweekly queer pool night, and is quick to extend an invite. With Straus, who also cohosts the recurring queer costume party Bazongas, the conversation often returns to the topic of relationships and cultivating community.

“ The reaction’s been great,” she adds, asked about reception to her newest releases. “I really am just so lucky to have the fans that I do. Their sense of humor and their passion for troubled lesbian music is really inspiring,” she adds. “My fans are funny and they get me, and they crack me up. So it’s been really wonderful to watch them play around with all of the material.”

That material includes an Instagram meme account launched for King Princess’ archnemesis, Cherry, a spiteful bosomed cartoon fruit and recurring visual theme throughout the album launch. “She’s an ancient demon,” Straus says when asked about the character’s origin story. “She possesses women. She’s furious at me, and I’m furious at her. Now she’s trying to leak my music. It’s making me really upset.”

Whether or not Cherry beats Straus to the punch, the music will be released one way or another come Sept. 12. 

Straus began working on what would become “Girl Violence” two years ago while still living in Los Angeles, before she moved back to Brooklyn as she settled into her mid-20s. The first song that made it onto the album was “Cry, Cry, Cry,” an upbeat revenge track of sorts that details the breakdown of a friendship. “That was actually one of the last ones to get done,” she says of the album’s fifth track, released as a single in July. After starting the song, she met her lead collaborators on the album, Jake Portrait and Joseph Pincus, who helped her shape its sonic direction.

The album’s titular track “Girl Violence” primes the listener with its first line, “You’ve got issues, you admit it, you ask if I look at you different.” 

“ I was investigating the topic of girl violence,” Straus says of her thesis for the album, which interrogates the quiet, sneaky, sometimes below-the-surface ways that women can hurt each other. “The last line of the record is ‘not everybody loves like this,’” she adds, referencing the final ballad track, “Serena.” “It’s kind of this declaration of, like, actually — all this pain, all this chaos, I’m lucky to have the bandwidth to experience [it]. And that’s kind of the conclusion of the record.”

Straus’ recent foray into acting has brought new fans into the King Princess fold, leading a resurgence of interest in past work like her debut album “Cheap Queen.” King Princess made her acting debut this past spring in Hulu series “Nine Perfect Strangers,” and will make her film debut with “Song Sung Blue,” out Christmas day. The film costars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as a Neil Diamond musical tribute act.

 ”I have to tell you: it’s fab,” Straus says of the film, positioned as a major end-of-year release. “And I’m a pretty tough critic of movies. I fully cried.” Hers is a supporting but impactful role, with Straus navigating the weight of portraying the daughter of a recovering alcoholic and aspiring performer.

After her first two onscreen roles, King Princess is fully hooked on the acting life — and has a vision for what her next roles might look like.

“I would like to be a colonial woman or something. I wanna wear a corset. I would like to play a straight woman. That’s my dream,” she says. “I would like to play like a gargoyle. Like, I would love to be in full prosthetics. I would love to be kind of unrecognizable,” she adds. “I love the dress up, and the character creation is so fun for me.”

Speaking of dress-up: She has become a fashion show front row fixture in New York, attending recent fashion shows for Marc Jacobs, Thom Browne and Christian Cowan.

So far acting has taught Straus how to take herself, and by extension her music, less seriously. “Music can be very isolating, and you can get really into the minutiae of everything to the point where you’re overthinking. And I think the acting thing really has allowed me to be more of a clown and less of a serious b—h,” she says. It also takes a little pressure off: “ That’s the nice thing about acting: you show up, you do your thing and then you leave and it’s none of your business. You have no control over whether something’s gonna be good or not. It’s kind of amazing. For somebody who’s a control freak, it’s like exposure therapy.”

In October, Straus will kick off a tour that will take her across the U.S. and to Europe. “ I’m beyond excited. Mommy needs to get on stage. Mommy needs a stage to live,” she says. “ It feels so good though to throw your body around and really thrive, and I can see that I’m just ready for tour,” she continues. “I miss it. I miss my fans, I miss my shows. These people make me laugh. They’re hilarious. They’re so much fun to perform for. Like, I’m just ready.  I can picture in my head what the first three rows of my show look like, and I made this record thinking about them.”

Asked what she hopes those first rows of fans will take away from her new music, Straus brings her answer home. 

“ I hope people see themselves in some of the themes that are talked about,” she says. “I hope that if you’re a dyke, or a straight person, who’s finding yourself in the chaotic mess that is dating women, that this record feels like a home for you to feel connected to the fact you’re not alone.”

“ I’m so inspired by my community and our tales and our sagas and our chaos. I am both a part of it and an active member, but also an observer,” Straus adds. “It is the hardest thing to do, to figure out how to be alive and how to be loved. That is so challenging, and I am still a student. But with my records, I’m always trying to elevate the call, each time investigating something further. And in the process of it thinking, OK, maybe I’m a little bit better of a person.”