Niko Rubio’s recent record release party for her new EP, “Sunday Girl,” which came out in late April, felt more festive than a typical industry event. Perhaps this was because the singer-songwriter, who was wearing a slinky leopard-print dress and drinking margaritas, was also celebrating her 25th birthday.

Before her set, Rubio, who is of Mexican and El Salvadoran descent, was holding court at a back table in the Rockwell Lounge in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles, jumping up to greet fans and friends, introducing each to the rest of the crew at her table.

Her guests were dressed up. Two young women in bodysuits, concha belts and sky-high heels touched up their lip liner and adjusted each other’s cleavage before making their entrance, while a few of the singer’s fans from across the border — late-middle-aged women in tasteful heels and false eyelashes, pocketbooks hanging demurely on their wrists — waited for Rubio to take the stage.

Rubio possesses a hyper-femme dazzle that recalls 1990s Gwen Stefani, with whom she co-wrote the 2024 country-pop duet “Purple Irises,” as well as Stefani’s 2023 single “True Babe.” And for the last decade, the singer has been focusing on achieving old-school, household-name-style pop fame. As a teenager, Rubio, who is managed by her aunt Ana Maldonado, was writing songs and recording with local producers and beat makers she connected with on Instagram. Five years ago, she graduated to what she calls “the real music industry,” both as a songwriter and an artist, releasing three EPs since 2021 — “Sunday Girl” will be her fourth — and opening for artists like Omar Apollo and Chase Atlantic.

But the whole enterprise reflects her pursuit of a coherent creative identity: Her EPs vary in genre and sound, from indie rock to more hip-hop coded — and two are sung almost entirely in Spanish. “With other artists it’s like, ‘This is what I like and it’s very clear,’” said Rubio. “But for me, I wanted it all. I love Erykah Badu just as much as I love mariachi music just as much as I love, you know, Incubus.”

“Niko’s vibe is really reflective of the times,” said Stefani. “I feel like people growing up in these times have so much access to information and different kinds of music that they don’t have the same kind of borders that we had growing up. They just try everything, and I see that in her in how she dips into so many different styles.”

With the launch of a solo tour in the United States Rubio is finally zeroing in on her own voice. “‘Sunday Girl’ is really for me,” she said. Rubio imagines the song’s titular character as a nun leading a double life: By day, she fulfills her duties at the convent; by night, she performs as a sultry lounge singer. “Sometimes as a Latina woman I feel like I live as a nun and I cover myself up. I don’t talk about my sexuality. I don’t fully express myself,” said Rubio. “This is the first time I feel like I’m doing that. This is my rebellion album.”

Growing up, Rubio felt deeply connected to her heritage, but guilty about the sacrifices her family made to give her opportunities they didn’t have: She was the first in her family who was able to pursue her passion. “You can’t play with a baby at 19,” Rubio said, referring to the fact that her mother gave birth to her as a teenager. “My mom was dealt a difficult card and she’s so thankful that she chose to have me, but I also have to deal with that subconscious horrible guilt. The Catholic guilt is so real.”

Though she hails from Redondo Beach, Rubio attended high school on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, a ritzy area nearby where her grandparents lived “above their means” to allow her access to an elite education.

But as “the only brown girl” in the predominantly white, Catholic community, Rubio stood out. As far back as elementary school, she was reaching for songs, mostly by women, that not only helped her articulate her feelings, but shaped her worldview.

“Anytime I go through a breakup, No Doubt’s ‘Ex-Boyfriend’ gets turned on for hours,” said Rubio. The generations between Stefani and Shakira, and Lana Del Rey didn’t register with her when she first was listening to them on the music streaming platform Pandora. “I go on TikTok now and there’s girls that are like, my whole identity was created by Pandora,” Rubio said

Del Rey, whom she regards as her guiding light, anchored Rubio’s musical aesthetic. “Born To Die,” Del Rey’s blockbuster debut, came out in 2012, when Ms. Rubio was in fifth grade. “Mexicans love her,” said Rubio, who said some Latin people refer to Lana Del Rey as “Lanita.”

“We feel so represented by her,” said Rubio. “I think for Latin women, we are attracted to the unadulterated essence of longing and yearning and being bad. It goes against the Catholicism, it goes against patriarchy. She’s so strong but she’s also like, ‘I’m also a slut for a guy, and we want all of that, you know what I mean?”

Although Rubio began writing songs as a teenager, it wasn’t until she was a sophomore in high school that she got serious about it. She told Maldonado that she needed to become “an artist, to go on tour and to make music for people and to represent Southern California and Mexican Salvadoran women and be a pop star.”

Maldonado, who radiates a mix of optimism with grit, agreed to work with her. Her aunt enrolled in the UCLA music business extension program to study music management. Rubio sneaked into her aunt’s classes, and the two became obsessed with breaking into the music world.

“We would go to literally any session, whoever DMs you,” said Rubio. “We would go to some random dude’s house in Redondo Beach, like, knock on their door. That’s where it can get scary. You have to pray to God that you’re gonna be OK, and luckily I was. I had Ana.”

Rubio was 16 when she and Maldonado went to Coachella for their first time. “When you’re born and raised here, it’s Mecca,” she said. She remembered turning to her aunt and announcing that one day she would play the festival, but last year she didn’t even attend as a fan. “I just didn’t deserve to go, girl,” she said. “Put in the work. You know what I mean? Like, you’re turning 25! Where are you going with this? What are you trying to say?” Instead, she kept her nose to the grindstone. In a single year, 20,000 followers turned into over 120,000.

“You have to do that,” she said. “You can’t sit there and be like, ‘My fans will find me.’ They don’t find you, you have to go out and seek them. You have to let go of the part of your brain that’s telling you you’re not good enough, you have to let go of your part of the brain that is telling you you’re not pretty enough, you have to let go of the part of your brain that’s telling you you’re not talented enough.”

Has she done that?

“Almost,” said Rubio, smiling. “I’m almost ready.”

Camera operating by Michael Tyrone Delaney

Kayla Bundy likes to start her day with a cup of bone broth.

She buys her milk raw, snacks on sardines, eats authentic sourdough bread — no commercial yeasts here — and generally cooks with locally-sourced ingredients. On TikTok, where she has over 500,000 followers, she claims that her diet “fixed” her skin, her hair and her depression, and she sells coaching sessions to help others with their diets.

Bundy, a 27-year-old Christian content creator, might sound like your run-of-the-mill clean-eating type, but she believes her diet to be part of a higher calling. For eight years, she has been a biblical eater, someone who consumes mostly foods mentioned in the Bible. She is part of a niche but dedicated online community trying to tie religious values to dietary needs.

In an era when the Make America Healthy Again movement has pushed for more access to unpasteurized dairy products, stricter boundaries around ultraprocessed foods and new definitions for what counts as healthy food, alternative diets focusing on simpler foods are finding popularity, even when their proponents don’t actively consider themselves part of the MAHA movement. Add to that the growing numbers of GLP-1 users struggling to eat enough protein, and biblical diets can offer an appealing repackaging of certain age-old diet tenets. (The new acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who assumed his role on Tuesday, is also a vocal champion for policies to remove chemicals from the food supply.)

“I had never really thought to look to the Bible for a recipe book,” Bundy, who grew up in Michigan and now lives in Bali, said, but after cutting out refined sugar made her feel good, she said, she started “studying scripture from that lens of noticing what they are eating.”

She added: “Sin entered into the world through food, and Satan doesn’t stop there. Food, for me, is really like a weapon of how I can fight back.”

Bundy is open about not having nutrition credentials, but she sells a $28 digital guide to biblical superfoods, as well as coaching sessions that start around $700 for a month, she said.

She’s not the only one. Like other health food influencers, the biblical eating proponents with popular accounts often sell products.

Annalies Xaviera, a stay-at-home mom who lives in Gainesville, Ga., and posts biblical eating tips, said her Facebook following had jumped from scant thousands to over 300,000 in just a few weeks this spring. She sells a digital cookbook.

“The Bible says that God appreciates and celebrates small steps of obedience,” said Xaviera, 32, who added that she did not consider herself part of the MAHA movement, but that some of its goals, like removing artificial dyes from foods, aligned with her own preferences.

She said her approach boiled down to eating whole foods and cooking meals at home. She still buys some processed foods, like pasta.

Eating biblically — which can mean strictly sticking to the good book’s ingredients, cooking from scratch or anything in between — is not new. “The Eden Diet,” a 2008 book, offered weight loss and nutrition tips rooted in biblical teachings. The author Jordan Rubin’s 2004 book “The Maker’s Diet” was a best seller (as was his recent book “The Biblio Diet,” coauthored with Josh Axe, a supporter of the MAHA movement, and published last year).

For years, some Christians have also participated in “Daniel fasts,” 21-day fasts based on the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, in which Daniel consumes only vegetables and water. (There’s also, of course, the long tradition of religious diets, such as keeping kosher or halal, or following a Levitical diet. Jesus, himself, presumably kept kosher.)

On social media, however, biblical eating has appeared to have a resurgence in recent months.

A few years ago, the actor Chris Pratt talked about completing a Daniel fast when he was on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” In January, as part of his partnership with the prayer app Hallow, he posted a video encouraging his followers to use the app to participate in a fast and prayer challenge. The bean-heavy fast had made him quite gassy, he said with a laugh. Other celebrities, including Mark Wahlberg and Patricia Heaton, have been part of similar efforts with the app.

Casper Schimmer, a college student in Amsterdam, said he sold coaching sessions for young, Christian men looking to align their diet and exercise with their faith.

“It’s not like eating healthy only is what makes a godly person,” Schimmer, 20, said. He said he also focused on physical and mental fitness as part of a larger system of “godly habits.” (For example, sabbath as the “original biohack.”)

Jennifer R. Ayres, a religious education professor at Emory University, said the biblical food movement online seemed to show “a focus on personal decision making.” She added that “the more collective and environmental analysis of what’s happening in our food system” is missing from some of the social media dialogue.

Abbie Stasior, a Christian dietitian who lives in Nashville, said much of her work looked, at first, like standard nutrition guidance. She often starts with clients by talking about the importance of breakfast. But then she’ll reference Bible verses, pointing, for example, to a scene in the Book of John in which Jesus eats a balanced breakfast of bread and fish with his disciples. “He’s got carbs and protein,” Stasior, 31, said.

Tying dietary counsel to scripture offers “an extra incentive,” Stasior said.

When it comes to meeting nutrition needs, Dr. Marion Nestle, one of the country’s foremost nutrition policy experts, said that if people on the biblical diet consume ample calories and eat “a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods,” they are “probably doing just fine.”

She also described how wellness culture had been colliding with policy.

“The thing about wellness is that it’s based on personal experience rather than science — it’s what makes you feel good,” Nestle said, adding: “Diet is about belief. We don’t have a lot of belief systems left in this country. People are desperate for meaning in their lives.”

Xaviera, the stay-at-home mother in Georgia, said she encouraged her followers to pause before eating, describing a person who might be deciding whether to eat a cookie.

“When you’re in a craving,” she said, “have you ever thought to stop and pray?”