X. ARI s has been through a lot of changes in her life, but her commitment to music has remained the same. She’s been a presence in music for over 25 years: she recorded her first song at age 10 and spent her early teen years touring with pop trio Untamed, who signed to CAA and achieved Canadian radio success with their song “You’re Not Gonna Score.” But in the years following the group’s breakup, X. ARI struggled with mental illness, particularly ADHD, Bipolar One, Anxiety, and OCD tendencies. Years of trying to downplay her experiences had reached a breaking point. She now says, “People take, on average, take 11 years to get help. It took me 15.”
In 2016, X. ARI decided to channel her experiences with mental illness into her art, becoming X. ARI, equal parts alt-pop singer-songwriter and mental wellness advocate. Since then, she’s released 10 EPs that transform her life experiences into raw, relatable and slickly produced pop songs, including “Once in A Lifetime” (2025) in collaboration with BMG, “Neuroplastic” (2024) funded by FACTOR, “Songs for Dancers” (2023), “Pain Into Power (2022), “Anja” (2021), which chronicles her queer awakening and relationship with her girlfriend, and “Uni-Fi “(2019), which explores her gender dysphoria via duets with male persona IRA X.
X. ARI pushes her authentic self-acceptance further than just her music. For Uni-Fi, she performed with half of her body in drag to embody X. ARI and IRA X. simultaneously, and teamed up with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) to speak at schools about living with mental illness to show kids that “they too can achieve their dreams regardless of mental health challenges. I didn’t think I could have that, but here I am, having a fulfilling and meaningful life full of love and creativity.” X. ARI is also the founder of WisdoMania Foundation — a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit that bridges the arts and self-care to bring meaningful experiences to schools, communities and live events with donors such as Atlantic Records, Warner Music Group and MTV — WisdoMania Fest, an immersive, mental health-centric arts festival held in Los Angeles every May, during Mental Health Month, sponsored by Spotify.
On October 10, 2022, in support of World Mental Health Day, X. ARI released her EP, Pain into Power, named after the project’s longtime slogan and central philosophical mantra. One of the EP’s singles, “Don’t Choose Heaven,” was released during National Suicide Prevention Week and proceeds were donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, while the EP’s merch features items that are important to Daniella’s own mental wellness practices — a self-reflection journal and scented candles — with a portion of proceeds going to Canadian youth mental health charity Jack.org. These are just a few of the ways that X. ARI has gone about her central mission: to use her creativity to empower listeners and musicians like her who have felt that their mental illness could hold them back, and to show them that they can turn their pain into power, weaknesses into superpowers, burdens into blessings.
With each successive release, X. ARI gets closer to becoming the mental health advocate she always wanted to see in the music industry. “All I needed to see was someone similar to me saying, ‘Hey, I was in the hospital experiencing psychosis and here I am! I’m okay!’ I didn’t see any of that.” She practices what she preaches, frequently uses her social media profiles and website to share honest depictions of her feelings and practices, and to advocate for more inclusive behaviour, such as using a recent song placement on Love Is Blind season 3 to question one cast member’s usage of the term “bipolar.”
X. ARI’s music can be heard in many episodes of TV series such as The Ultimatum, The L Word, Love Is Blind, Bad Girls Club, Are You the One?, Siesta Key, Selling Sunset, and Teen Mom. Since 2019, X. ARI has written and performed songs for the character “W” in the video game Arknights, including “Renegade,” which was nominated for the 2021 Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Song in a Video Game and has amassed over 4.2 million streams on YouTube. Another track X. ARI was a vocalist on for Arknight won a Hollywood Music in Media Award in November, 2023. An accomplished and sought-after songwriter, she has worked alongside publishers such as Warner Chappell Music (leading to a placement with French artist Broken Back on his song “Young Love”), written for Eurovision in Belgium, Norway & Netherlands, placed as a semi-finalist in the 2021 International Songwriting Competition, received an honourable mention in the Unsigned Only songwriting competition, and been named one of the “Hot 100 Live Unsigned Artists & Bands” by American trade magazine Music Connection.
X. ARI has previously received Artist Development, two Juried Sound Recording grants, and Songwriter Development grant from FACTOR and the SOCAN Foundation’s TD Creative Entrepreneurship Incubator. She has participated in talks and panels for organizations such as National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), The Mental Health Coalition, It Gets Better, Mental Health Action Day, IndieWeek, Jack.org, NAMI, Women inMusic Canada and She Is the Music. In 2023 & 2024 she hosted the Peer to Peer web-series by One Mind, in partnership with YouTube.
X. ARI had a busy 2024! She released her 9th EP “Neuroplastic”, funded by FACTOR, in September, 2024. She released it along with a music video on ice for her single “Thank Me” where she showcased her figure skating skills choreographed by Olympic coach Joey Russel. She also landed a custom commercial via Assemble Sound with e.l.f. cosmetics. She has created custom sync projects with BMG, G16, Glow Music Group, Artlist. She went to Norway to write for Eurovision & landed two songs on the shortlist for the MGP Finals.
2025 has also been a prolific year for X. ARI. She kicked off the year with a release “Keep On Rocking On” in collaboration with sync company Artlist and released a custom EP with BMG called “Once In a Lifetime”. Her song “Dancing Til’ My Tears Dry” landed a sync spot on season 8 of Love Is Blind, which featured huge artists this season such as Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, Arianna Grande, and more! Her songs “Already Made It” & “Next To You” were featured Teen Mom (who has previously synced “Be Where You Are”, “As You Are”, “Laugh It Off” and more). She just returned from Eurovision song camps in Netherlands & Norway and her songwriting skills got her invited to participate in additional Eurovision song camps in Belgium and Matla in June! She is currently gearing up for her next release “Vicious” coming out on May 23 off her 11th EP titled “11th Hour”.
The summer of 2025 is jammed pack for X. ARI with performances & songwriting projects. This May she is be creating a custom EP for Superpop via Extreme distributed by Sony and a project for Paramount with WestOne. After all of her song camp travels in June she will be creating her first sound bath EP titled “Love & Light” via her non-profit WisdoMania Foundation. “Love & Light” will feature a meditation, vocals, and high frequency sound healing instruments to help spread healing, love and relaxation in the world.