Talking with Ela Melo of Rainbow Kitten Surprise

For the many fans of North Carolina indie band Rainbow Kitten Surprise, it’s no surprise that the co-founding lead singer and chief songwriter is now known as Ela Melo. He was openly gay, and the transition into Ela (she/her pronouns) wasn’t entirely unexpected. She made the public announcement in 2022.

Melo insists she’s finally found the happiness that had always eluded her.

Most importantly, it’s only made Rainbow Kitten Surprise’s mashup of harmony folk, rock and hip hop sharper and more adventurous, as evidenced on the 22-track Love Hate Music Box album, the first RKS record in six years, released last fall.

The band, a longtime festival favorite, performs June 18 at the BayCare Sound amphitheater.

The Catalyst spoke with Ela, 33, who’s never shied away from talking openly about her past mental health issues, and about her transition.

Find tickets to the BayCare Sound show here.

St. Pete Catalyst: Do you get tired of your transition being the subject of every conversation like this one?

Ela Melo: I never get tired of talking about it, because I feel like there’s plenty of people out there who are like, ‘what is happening to me?’ As I was. In the initial stages, it’s just one of those things that has maybe it’s been building your whole life, why didn’t you transition earlier? I transitioned pretty late. It’s a hard thing to go through.

Maybe you can inspire people who are going through the same thing.

Absolutely. I’ve seen it in my own life, and in the lives of friends. I don’t think it gets talked about enough, what it’s like. And how much better it gets, after you figure it out. I describe my transition to people as I felt like I saw in black and white before I transitioned, and then it was full color. You know what I mean? I really opened up in a lot of ways. There’s value in connection more.

I had a hard time my whole life, connecting with people. I never felt very seen. I didn’t know what to call it. I looked around and thought ‘Man, it looks like everybody’s got something I just don’t have.’

I felt like I was a machine before I transitioned, and I don’t know if that was me running from something, Like, just not knowing how life could get on the other side of it. And it’s so worth it.

Obviously it was inevitable, but was it something that took a long time for you to admit ‘This is the direction I need to take my life’?

It felt like ‘there are different sides of myself I’m not showing, that there’s this whole other person that wants to emerge.’ Almost in a literal sense I felt that, like I was housing two people inside of me. One was a whole lot more life-loving, and one was more intense than the other. And it didn’t come until I was almost 30. But when I met this other person I was like, ‘Oh, you’re the one that should be in front. Because you want it. You want to connect with people. You want to be seen.’ And so we swapped places or whatever, you know? That’s kind of how it felt.

Let’s talk about your public persona, your image as it were. Do you say goodbye to that person, or just put them on the back burner?

You say goodbye to that person. You say ‘You were never real to begin with.’ And then it just goes ‘poof,’ like a magic trick. Just like, my whole life I’ve been putting on this thing that people wanted me to be. Or it felt like that’s how they were seeing me, and I never saw myself in that. And the second that you see your real self – for me, probably a more loving and more hungry for human affection, more driven being. The other thing was just, like ‘what was that even about?’

You incorporate all the other things, though. It’s just a new face that you share. And ultimately, I believe that with everyone I’ve ever seen transition, it is the true self that’s showing.

On the subject of image, the band’s got a lot of fans. Did you ever think maybe they’re not ready for this? A little too weird for them or something?

I was hoping the fans would be kind and accepting – and they were. But I tell you literally I could not have gone on living as I was. I was ready to go. I reached a point in my life where’d I’d accomplished the things I wanted to accomplish. It felt like everything was just kind of ‘Maybe this is it, maybe I’m tapped.’ And then I found this new being, this new drive, this new love for life. And I’m just really grateful that the fans have been accepting and awesome about it.

How did it change your writing? Or did it?

I was happier, just generally, just on a baseline level. So there’s a little bit of poppiness that comes with that, that maybe I wasn’t carrying with me before then. For the most part, I think there’s a lot of … I hesitate to say darkness, but there’s some heavy in there. And that’s life, you know? It’s the light and the dark, the heavy and the happy and all those things.

’ll tell ya, I’ve been the most prolific I’ve ever been. Not just the transition, but also getting sober has been huge. Especially for this most recent record, I kinda went on a tear.

I’m grateful for the acceptance and the community that surrounds me, and it’s just an awesome time to live in, in my life.

What about your singing voice? How has that changed?

I’ve been playing with different parts of my voice, for sure. Going for more of the high stuff, or more falsetto kind of stuff. That might be connected to transitioning, but it might also just be me exploring things as a vocalist.  

There’s a certain rawness you have in your 20s – and speaking to anyone who has that, use it, be grateful for it and don’t burn it out, because we’re decaying in some ways. We peak. And I’m not saying that’s happening to me, but I’ll listen to older recordings and I can’t do some of the things I used to.

But I think I’m in the best place, vocally, I’ve ever been.