Caroline Chang
Immediately after sitting down, Alex Sholler, better known as electronic music producer/DJ Alison Wonderland, tells the server and me that she wants a fun fizzy drink. “Mom’s big day out,” she says, settling on a virgin mojito. Originally hailing from Australia, Alison Wonderland has spent over a decade living in Los Angeles, establishing herself globally as a force to be reckoned with in dance music, and locally as a mother and wife. She pulls out her phone to show me a photo of her youngest, sitting in her lap while she produces a track, then turns to me straight after and asks, “So, do you want any kids?” — establishing the lightheartedly friendly yet undeniably honest tone that carries us through the meal.
We’re at an Italian restaurant in the valley. I ask her what her days usually consist of, and she outlines rituals of waking up at 6 a.m. to care for her two young kids, spending every day working in the studio, rarely pressing pause to even sleep a full eight hours. But to her, the restlessness feels like a part of who she is, and she’s not slowing down.
Alison Wonderland (Photo: @donslens)
“It’s a blessing and a curse for me to hit a goal or an achievement. I can never just sit with it and celebrate it. The second I do it, I’m like, what’s next? What can I do next? I’ve never been able to just sit back and enjoy something that I’ve achieved,” she says. “I think when you’re creative, you’re just always trying to create, and create the next thing, and keep your brain excited. It’s really just to keep myself sane, but to be honest, it’s also truly why I think I’ve been able to have such an incredibly long, amazing career so far.”
That tension — between hitting a milestone and immediately reaching past it, feeling like true success is always fleeting — is the engine that keeps pushing Sholler forward. The goalpost for her is always moving, but she’s in love with her process and almost identifies with the chase.
I had prepared an interview about what’s coming up next for the Alison Wonderland project. I ask her if she wanted to talk about her new single “RESCUE U” with WINK that dropped Oct. 1, to which she quickly answers “No.” Concise and confident. “Let’s just talk about the fun stuff that people care about.”
What’s next for Alison Wonderland is in fact far more meaningful to Sholler than any one track alone. For the first time in her career, Alison Wonderland is gearing up to release music entirely independently, on her own label, with no major behind her. She’s careful, almost protective, about how she talks about the exit from EMI Australia under Universal Music, the label she’s been signed to since 2011. “They’ve never, ever told me how to be an artist,” she says. “I think they may be the only label that could understand me as an artist and truly just let me do my own thing. I am really grateful for that, and I would like to acknowledge that I was in quite a unique situation.”
To Sholler, going out on her own isn’t her breaking free, but more so coming home. A milestone that has been a decade and a half in the making. “I’ve never been able to own my own music, because big record labels, when you sign to them, they own that stuff. It would be really nice to have ownership of my creativity again.”
Alison Wonderland started her own label FMU Records back in 2022, with the goal of building a sanctuary where artists feel “like humans, not statistics.” She tells me that a lot of the best music she hears these days is bedroom-made and underplayed. It was her realization that she could use her platform to hold space for these budding artists while still promoting their music globally that inspired her label in the first place. “I just want to give them a stepping stone,” she says. “It’s more like, if I can be a tiny stepping stone in a little part of someone’s big life, or even a confidence boost for an artist to move on to the next thing, that’s all I care about. I want good music out there. I’m a music lover. I love good music. I love electronic music.”
Alison Wonderland (Photo: Jared Tinetti @jaredtinetti)
Now, after four full-length records and dozens of other releases under a corporation, Sholler is ready to give that freedom back to herself — the freedom to protect her creative process alone, and to own every ounce of success that follows it. “I’m a bit nervous, it’s a lot of pressure to do it for myself,” she says. “But I’ve seen how the big corporations work. I know what I want to do and what I don’t want to do because I’ve seen it. And mostly, I think I just want to keep making music.”
But of course, if Sholler communicated anything to me over our pasta and burrata lunch, it’s that she would never slow down to only make music. The pace of producing music, touring globally, raising kids, and building a label all at once isn’t her sprint, it’s her second nature. Sholler doesn’t crumble under the pressure — she ignites.
“I said this to Garth [her manager] the other day, but I’m sick of trying to prove myself,” she says. “That’s probably my biggest insecurity. I don’t really know what anyone thinks about me because I’m still that girl in Sydney in her studio, making music. And then sometimes I’ll walk down the street and someone will recognize me and come up to me and I forget that anyone even knows who I am. I think that keeps me really grateful.
“But I also think part of that is because for 10 years, before anyone even cared about me, I was never taken seriously. I really had to fight for it. I had to turn up and work twice as hard. I was getting ridiculed and I was getting laughed at. I’d have people standing over me at shows waiting for me to fuck up. But I would take that and spend the next week, every single day on the decks, practicing a new trick, so I could come back out next time and be like, haha, fuck you.”
We’re sitting outside, but the air seems to thicken as she talks about the tough skin she developed in her upbringing — being bullied, intensely training in classical cello, grasping for recognition. “I definitely didn’t hear ‘I’m proud of you’ enough growing up,” she adds.
It’s kept a certain kind of edge in her, one she half-jokes about. “It’s kind of like a superpower,” Sholler says. “The more I’ve lived my life, the more I’ve realized how powerful women are.”
Alison Wonderland (Photo: @donslens)
I mention something she’s said in past interviews: that she doesn’t think of herself as a female artist, just an artist. “Well, we should start calling male artists male artists,” she says, already laughing.
Though Sholler has been outspoken in the past about her artistry being gender neutral, she admits that in recent years she’s found herself drawn more and more toward female collaborators. “The more I’ve evolved, the more I’ve been drawn to women in the industry,” she says. “It’s my preference to work with women now.” She points to her sessions with producer Ninajirachi, who she worked with on her last album, as some of the favorites of her career. “We’re just very powerful together.”
It wasn’t always this easy for her to lean into these instincts. “I spent so much of the first half of my career fighting to be taken seriously in the industry,” she says. “And now I don’t feel as insecure about that anymore.” Sholler tells me that the messages she receives help to bridge that gap — mostly messages from strangers, and from women at that, telling her they picked up a controller or booked their first gig because they watched her do it first. “Those are my favorite messages I get,” she says, a little reminder that the work she’s doing does make a difference.
I was honestly surprised to hear how much she needs to be reminded of the impact Alison Wonderland has. I spent hours in the car in college driving to her sets, rushing friends across festival grounds to catch her on time. As a woman trying to build something of my own in dance music, I’d always idolized her. And that hasn’t changed. Alex Sholler is no less confident, radiant, or self-assured than I had imagined her to be, but behind her bangs and baggy T-shirt, she really is just a girl with a dream, hoping to have her moment in the sun, holding her flowers after a job well done.
I ask her, finally, what success actually looks like to her right now — releasing on her own terms, for the first time, under her own name.
“My version of success is feeling truly happy and content.” She pauses longer than she has all afternoon. “And I will never feel that way. Which is why I’m going to keep working.”
Follow Alison Wonderland on Instagram @alisonwonderland.
Upcoming Dates:
October 10 — Zouk — Las Vegas, NV
October 11 — Nitehearts Closing Party — San Diego, CA
October 18 — Tomorrowland — China
October 24 — Pokémon Night Out — Los Angeles, CA
November 7 — EDC Orlando — Orlando, FL
November 10 — Pokémon Night Out — London, UK
December 31 — Rolling Meadows — New Zealand
Alison Wonderland on the Oct. 2, 2026, cover of LA Weekly (Photo: Jared Tinetti @jaredtinetti; cover design: Mark Stefanos)