DeathByRomy photographed at Aftershock Festival at Discovery Park in Sacramento on Oct. 5, 2023. Mike DeWald/STAFF.

It’s tough to pin down Romy Flores, better known as DeathByRomy. The 24-year-old singer channels goth and dark pop into her style and her sound, which has elements of industrial rock, electronica and punk. For Flores, it makes perfect sense.

“My top five favorite artists of all time are Bjork, Kanye West, White Stripes, Bring Me the Horizon and Lady Gaga,” Flores said. “I feel like you can hear a little bit of all of that in my music.”

Take all those artists, make it goth, and you get DeathByRomy. It’s a foundation that couldn’t fully manifest until Flores left her label and set off on her own.

“I think when I first signed, they had a vision of a girl who looked like me but made only sugarcoated pop music,” Flores said. “I love pop music, and my music is still heavily pop-influenced and follows a general pop structure, but my heart lies in something that moves you more.”

Flores wrote her first song at 5 and released her first single at 15. Capitol Records beckoned in 2019, where she made an EP and album, both rooted in the dark pop that shaped the sound that was yet to come. The songs found some success on a movie soundtrack, as well as through TikTok, but Flores sad she didn’t like the way her trajectory was pointing.

The opportunity it created is a world of boundless creative potential. Rather than following the structure of a single-album-tour cycle, Flores instead releases songs on her own terms as the inspiration strikes.

“I’ve just been trying to put out everything that I’m in love with,” she said. “It was really important to redefine my sound and reopen my world to my fans that had been following through, before and during the label.”

Tracks like “Hellhound” and “SAINT” are dark, moody and aggressive with a rock edge, yet hit with an anthemic quality that recall some of Flores’ earliest work. She said it’s a chance to make good on the vision she wanted fans to see and the truest form of DeathByRomy.

“I want to show them what I really wanted to put out,” Flores said. “My plan has just been releasing, releasing, releasing; not necessarily with a strategy—just putting out everything that feels good.”

Flores has also been gigging out as much as possible in between song releases, sometimes alongside her heroes, such as Pierce the Veil and The Used.

She crossed one of her all-time favorites off of her bucket list, she said, when Bring Me the Horizon added her to a festival the band curated festival in Malta in 2022. She had reached out to the band directly on Instagram and frontman Oli Sykes replied with a simple “yes.”

“Next thing I knew, me and my band were staying in this beautiful five-star hotel in Malta. We’d never been treated so well,” she said. “Since then it feels like I’ve been getting scooped up left and right for tours. It’s incredible; I’ve waited years and years for this!”

Flores will stay busy in 2024 as DeathByRomy hits the road for a nationwide tour supporting Set It Off and Crown the Empire.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.