SKUZLAND IS ON THE WAY!

Kristopher Fraser
Mar 5
3 min read

How a Supermodel and a Creative Director formed a Techno Pop-Punk Band

Taken from VALŪS Issue 002 Winter 2026 glossy print edition - order your copies today!

Written by Kristopher Fraser

The worlds of fashion model mainstay Jazzelle, aka Ugly Worldwide, and creative director extraordinaire Jean Carlos Pina, aka Robot MoonJuice, have come together in a cosmic union to form the duo known as SKUZLAND.

Their work is rooted in individualism, freedom, and self-expression. To them, the more unconventional, loud, and queer they can make the world, the better. The band was formed about three years ago as a spontaneous creative project. “We fucked around and found out,” says Worldwide.

“If you look up what skuz means,” she continues, “it’s slang for nasty, trashy, or dirty, but we like to think one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. In SKUZLAND, you can be whatever you want, do whatever you want, and let it all hang out.”

SKUZLAND describes their sound as experimental techno pop-punk ahead of their new EP, “OTW,” which marks their first full project together (the exact release date remains a mystery, but it will be in 2026). “OTW” is a culmination of the duo’s time as a performing act and includes songs from their early days, as well as more recent tracks that were written just months ago.

While most musicians have influences when it comes to their sound, and even their aesthetic and creative choices, SKUZLAND is about anti-influence. They prefer to draw inspiration from their own experiences of moving through life.

“We try to avoid being too referential,” MoonJuice said. “Everyone’s already done the Y2K thing. Everyone is reheating everyone else’s nachos. We want to push the limit and be as weird as possible.”

“Growing up as a kid in Detroit I listened to artists like David Bowie, and as a teenager, I listened to a lot of rap music,” Worldwide said. “When I moved from Chicago to New York City I became a club kid. All those experiences are my inspiration.”

When it comes to shaping their image, SKUZLAND takes an anti-fashion approach. They avoid looking at the internet or current trends for style inspiration and instead prefer to find inspiration from the myriad of fascinating, crazy folk who inhabit New York City. “We pull from very odd and sometimes scary places when it comes to our fashion inspirations,” Worldwide said.

It would be easy for these two out-of-the-box creatives to go off the wall, but they manage to keep each other in check. “As much as we like to have fun, we always remember this is music that other people have to enjoy,” MoonJuice says. “We’ve had those moments where we say to ourselves, ‘Maybe a screaming monkey isn’t a good sound to sample.’” They know just where to stop themselves before they get too avant-garde, as they still want the masses to find their final product digestible.

“We’ve been working in our respective fields a long time, and we have good vision and a strong sense of what we want, but we’re also a little fucking psychotic,” Worldwide said. “We’ll take our creative ideas as far as we want to take them, but then reel them back in.”

Speaking of recurrent themes, and even with their upcoming EP, the duo say there are two themes their fans can always count on: cigarettes and daddy issues. But aside from that, they say their new album is about self-acceptance and trying to get people to accept where they’ve been and who they are, both the good and the bad.

SKUZLAND avoids diving straight into producing when they are making an album. Instead, they go into the studio, pick a song, theme, and instrument, and then work back and forth with producers until they have a final song they want to release to the world. Despite how much they let loose when creating their music, where they really take things to the next level is during live performances. It is not unheard of for SKUZLAND to start barking in the middle of a song, shocking most audiences.

“It’s one thing to hear someone screaming on a track, and it’s another to have them screaming in your face,” MoonJuice said. “We want our audiences to leave sweaty and confused. If you aren’t questioning your life choices or sexuality after the show, we didn’t do our jobs.”