A yellow cab pulls up to the curb. A sinewy woman emerges, stepping out onto the gray city sidewalk. Her uniform—strapless white bra, blue jeans, suspenders, and fiery red mohawk—evokes the era of Desperately Seeking Susan. Then the beat kicks in, followed shortly thereafter by strident vocals. Backup dancers materialize, sparking a torrent of eye-catching choreography.

The music video for “Hideaway,” the debut single by pop artist Kiesza, was the most innovative of the summer. Shot in one continuous take on North 12th Street and Kent in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it became a viral phenomenon, racking up 137 million YouTube views (and counting), and propelling the song to No. 1 on the U.K. singles chart.

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Seven years prior, Kiesa Rae Ellestad was in simulation training, dispatching virtual terrorists with a Colt Canada C-7 rifle—the equivalent of an Armalite AR-15.

“Ours is advanced for cold weather, so the barrel won’t explode in arctic conditions,” she says with a grin. “I was really good at shooting.”

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She enrolled in the Naval Reserve of the Royal Canadian Navy at 17 and soon learned that, due to an undiagnosed eye condition, her brain could lock focus on to a single target and refused to let it go. Before long, she was awarded the “Top Shot” award, and poised to be a top-level sniper. She was even recruited by the Calgary Highlanders—a Primary Reserve infantry regiment—which offered to have her be mentored by the Canadian who fired the longest sniper shot in history.

But killing CG enemies was as far as she got. “I could never kill a real person,” she says.

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I’m seated across from Kiesza at House of Small Wonder, a fantastical, Asian-tinged café with a tree growing out of the center that’s a mélange of Swiss Family Robinson treehouse and opium den. The place is located in Williamsburg, a mere six blocks from where her brother Blayre Ellestad filmed that memorable music video, and a month before her debut album, Sound of a Woman, is scheduled for release on Oct. 21.

The 25-year-old is tiny, with the paleness of her skin augmented by her fiery mane. She’s also charming, and filled with restless energy—which is why she’s probably the most eclectic pop star ever.

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Kiesza’s first love was ballet. She started when she was 3, and by the seventh grade, enrolled in a special program that called for her to leave school early and train three to four hours a day. “I made it a goal to be a prima ballerina,” she says.

At the same time, around the age of 4, she took up tap-dancing, and eventually won a gold medal in tap at a local Calgary competition. But she was forced to drop it at 11 to focus all her energy on ballet. At 15, she developed iliotibial band syndrome, injuring her knee, and had to surrender her dream.

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“My IT band popped out of my hip socket, which caused problems because it’s attached to the knee, so I couldn’t go on pointe and allow it to heal and had to stop,” she says, adding, “It was really tough.”

Kiesza had also been sailing since she was 13, so once ballet was out of the picture, she figured, “Well, I like sailing,” and soon became “obsessed.”

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She entered into the Naval Reserve of the Royal Canadian Navy at 17 while still in high school. “I was very hardcore and thought sailing would be my life, and I’d be the captain of a ship,” she says.

That same year, she began playing guitar to pass the time on boats. The first day she picked one up, she wrote a song about “a guy who looked like Frodo”—her movie crush.

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“My parents split up around the time I started writing, which brought in a lot of emotional baggage,” Kiesza says. “I was a weird teenager. My mother was actually worried because I didn’t have any interest in dating in my teenage years. I had all this desire to pursue my passions like ballet, then sailing, then music, so I didn’t have any emptiness to fill.”

If that weren’t enough, at 18, her grandmother—a former Miss Army, Navy, and Air Force—coaxed her into entering into the Miss Calgary beauty pageant. “I put on a dress and walked down, and ended up getting first runner-up,” she recalls. “Then, there ended up being a scandal with Miss Calgary, so she couldn’t hold her title, and they told me I needed to take her place as Miss Calgary.” She reluctantly agreed to make her grams happy, and participated in the Miss Universe Canada pageant, placing in the top 15.