It is a typical dinnertime at Allie Teilz’s house, and the atmosphere is immediately set by the music playing softly in the background. On any given evening, the soundtrack might feature a sweeping film score by Italian classicist Ennio Morricone or the smooth, rhythmic easing of Italian disco. One of her three-year-old twins is already swaying to the rhythm. Following a deliberate household routine, cell phones are tucked away into a ceramic cow on the kitchen counter for the remainder of the night—a designated resting spot preferred by her nearly eight-year-old child. The home features a projector, a vintage record player, and a wall of VHS tapes featuring classics like Yellow Submarine and The Land Before Time in heavy rotation. Teilz jokingly refers to her household, with a hint of affection, as a "90s-electronics household."
To those familiar with her trajectory, Teilz is undeniably cool. A vinyl DJ and producer who cut her teeth in the vibrant nightlife of Los Angeles, she spent her early career sharing DJ booths with iconic figures like Grace Jones and Daft Punk. Today, she spends her time scouring thrift stores and estate sales for vintage VHS tapes, while comfortably describing herself as "a mother first and an artist second." As a mother of four, she has managed a rare feat: weaving these two distinct versions of her identity authentically into one cohesive life.
In conversation, Teilz speaks with a captivating candor that draws listeners in immediately. The architecture of the childhood she is building for her children—one deeply steeped in art, music, tangible media, and endless curiosity—presents a vivid picture of modern creative parenting.
Her debut album, Come to Mommy, which is out now, represents the sonic manifestation of her journey to reclaim her internal artist after welcoming her children. The record is atmospheric, irresistibly danceable, and laced with an electronic vibe that feels simultaneously nostalgic and futuristic. The album’s title cleverly turns the well-worn pop culture phrase "come to daddy" on its head. While mainstream culture has historically preoccupied itself with what "Daddy" wants, Teilz boldly asks what "Mommy" wants, and she answers the question without hesitation. "Mommy wants joy," she says. "She wants to have fun and dance. She wants pleasure and joy."
We can let motherhood deepen the art
Rather than treating her children as obstacles or mere backdrop figures around which she must carve out time to make art, Teilz views them as the very catalyst that made her art deeper and more resonant. "Becoming their mom," she reflects, "only made everything bigger, not smaller." Motherhood taught her a profound lesson about time and focus: that the deepest creativity can often emerge from having very little spare time while knowing precisely what matters most.
There is a unique surrender inherent in becoming a parent, she explains—a soul willingly handing itself over to lead another human being through life. For Teilz, that surrender cracked her creative work wide open instead of closing it down. It liberated her in the creation process and provided her with a much deeper well from which to draw inspiration. In fact, she has taken to describing motherhood as "the highest form of art I’ve ever experienced."
This profound shift fundamentally altered what she wants to create. She now looks at her own artistic output through the eyes of her children, holding it to a singular, unwavering north star: What does she want to see more of in the world? Her answer certainly does not include "AI art and lobotomy chic," her sharp encapsulation of the soulless, machine-driven media she has watched creep into modern culture. Instead, she wants her kids to experience the visceral feeling she had when she first heard Talking Heads—the sense of absolute freedom, the permission to flail around in an imaginary version of David Byrne’s giant suit, and the ability to linger in that beautiful state of play. Come to Mommy serves as her direct attempt to put that specific feeling back into the world, and she credits her children as her greatest teachers and inspiration.
We don’t have to choose a singular version of ourselves
Most women are intimately familiar with the quiet, gradual shift that occurs upon entering motherhood, where the self often feels compelled to shrink to make room for everyone else’s needs. For a period, Teilz felt that pull, sliding toward the traditional model of motherhood she had watched other women vanish into. She observed local mom groups where women gave endlessly without ever considering their own fundamental needs, careers that were set down and never picked back up, and a pervasive inability to truly answer the basic question, "Who am I?"
She points an observant finger at the insidious cultural narratives woven into early childhood literature. "We’re indoctrinated by The Giving Tree and The Rainbow Fish," she observes, referencing classic children’s books that subtly sell self-erasure as the ultimate form of generosity. The underlying cultural message often dictates that if you make yourself a stump, you will be loved, and if you give away your unique sparkles, you will be accepted. Teilz observes this paradigm with clear-eyed caution: "That’s such a dangerous thing."
For a long stretch, her own priorities became submerged beneath the endless demands of daily life. What ultimately pulled her back to herself was simple yet radical: boundaries. She adopted practical measures like carrying a flip phone during the hours she refuses to be digitally reachable. Referencing an adage she encountered online—"have boundaries or get an autoimmune disorder"—she notes that protecting her health was what finally forced her to stop the cycle of depletion. "My kids don’t need a mom who disappears into anything," she asserts. "Even motherhood."
We get to decide what their childhood feels like
Teilz constructs her children’s childhood much like she builds a curated vinyl record—out of specific, deliberate, and slightly magical details. When one of her daughters earned a school leadership award and was granted the privilege of choosing how to celebrate, she asked to make "ice cream mountains," with scoops stacked precariously into a castle on parchment paper, modeled after an old ice cream shop Teilz adored as a girl. It was an exercise in being wonderfully ridiculous simply for the sake of joy. The memories Teilz cherishes most from her own upbringing are not grand vacations or luxury cruises, but rather simple moments, like her mother letting her siblings pick a favorite ice cream flavor before the first day of school. Today, she consciously crafts that same intimate, impactful kind of nostalgia for her own family.
Alongside this nostalgia is a generous helping of everyday wonder. Her children are frequently sent out to the family garden to harvest fresh parsley or tomatoes so their hands remain actively engaged in the creation of dinner. She has spent years teaching them to grow things from seed to fruition because watching a baby artichoke push up from the soil is the kind of small miracle she wants them to deeply appreciate.
Literature functions in much the same way in their home. Teilz often recounts an image that stayed with her long before she had children of her own: a woman reading quietly on a bustling subway car beside her small daughter amidst the chaos of the commute. Now, one of her proudest moments as a mother is watching her own daughter climb onto the couch to get completely lost in the pages of Harry Potter. "Stay curious about the world," she advises other mothers. "Keep reading. Stay interested in what matters to you."
None of this path came easily. The creation of Come to Mommy took place against the backdrop of a brutal personal chapter that included a traumatic birth—one that very nearly cost both Teilz and one of her newborn sons their lives. The album stands, in part, as a sonic record of her finding her way back from the brink. The final track on the record, "Back From the Dead," was written specifically for the twin she almost lost. It serves as her personal reminder, and a message to all of her children, that it is possible to recover from the worst imaginable hardships. Crafting art out of that pain was her way of processing the trauma while providing living proof to her kids that you can take something that breaks you and make something beautiful out of the ashes.
Reflecting on the overarching message of her work, Teilz paints a picture of an everyday moment: a mother pulling into her driveway, sitting in the quiet of the car for a minute before heading inside, with music still playing from the speakers. When asked what she wants that woman to carry inside with her, Teilz does not hesitate. She wants her to reclaim the fire of her own passion, to remember the song she danced to most fiercely at a milestone birthday, to feel held, and to remember that she deserves a reason to dance. Most of all, she wants her to feel like herself.
In a cultural landscape where women are frequently conditioned to believe that their identity must diminish to make room for caregiving, Allie Teilz has spent an entire album making the opposite case.
