Stella Katsoudas is a living fairy-tale, a tangible dream. She is a vibrant butterfly flying through a grey world, leaving splashes of color wherever she lands.

Katsoudas is a musician, the driving force behind Sister Soleil (not to mention the group’s siren-like vocalist), and that is the most important thing.

This is perfectly obvious during the course of a conversation with her.

“It’s more about the music than anything,” she said in a recent interview. “I want the music to be heard.”

That’s been her dream since she was a little girl, and that is still her dream now.

But at least her dream is getting a little bit easier to pursue.

Katsoudas signed a recording contract with Universal last year and recorded her major label debut, “Soularium,” which is scheduled to be released July 14th.

She will be shooting a video in support of the CD, which will probably pop up in MTV’s “Buzz Bin.” But she’s still not sure which track she is going to release as a single. She feels that they are all really good.

Chances are, the first single will be “Blind,” a track that was co-written with her good friend Preston Klik of the up-and-coming Chicago band My Scarlet Life, and features Peter Gabriel on back-up vocals.

“I basically black-mailed Peter into singing on the track,” Stella said while giggling. “But I can’t tell you how I black-mailed him. It wouldn’t be fair to him.”

Katsoudas is just joking around, of course. She doesn’t have any dirt on Gabriel, and if she actually did, she claims that she wouldn’t black-mail him with it.

“He’s too good of a friend to do that,” she stated.

No, the truth is a little more simplistic. Gabriel wanted to use some of the people who were working on the Sister Soleil CD. Katsoudas wanted him to do backing vocals on one of the group’s songs. So, they arranged a little bit of a trade.

“But I wouldn’t have made him sing if he really didn’t want to,” Katsoudas said in self-defense.

She isn’t the type of person who would lie in an interview. She is completely honest, which is evident in her lyrics and by the way she answers tough media questions.

She is perfectly blunt when it comes to her reasoning behind signing onto this year’s Dot Fest extravaganza.

“I’m doing it because I’m good pals with [KKDM music director and disc jockey] Sophia John,” she stated.

John added Sister Soleil’s “Drown Me In You” onto the station’s playlist over a year ago and introduced her to a large number of Midwesterners.

“She completely broke me wide open,” Katsoudas said. “She had a huge part in getting me my record deal. She basically put my group on the map.”

To thank John, Katsoudas agreed to accept a slot on this year’s Dot Fest.

“I would do anything for her and her station,” she added. “I feel that I owe her so much.”

However, John isn’t the only person who Katsoudas feels obligated towards. She would also like to do a lot of good things for all of the radio stations that have played her music during the last year.

“That’s not always easy to do,” she explained. “Radio is a game with its own set of rules, and those rules are really easy to break accidentally.

“For example, a radio station will support a band on the radio,” she continued. “Then a competing station will offer them money to play at some show it is hosting.

“If you play at the competing stations show, then the station that was playing your material is upset,” she said. “But if you don’t play the show, then the new radio station that is interested in you is upset. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

But signing with Universal Records was a win-win situation as far as she is concerned.

“I don’t have to worry about where the budget is going to come from,” she said. “I have more time to be an artist, and I don’t have to worry about the entire business aspect of the industry.”

Sister Soleil will be headlining this year’s Dot Fest, along with Everclear, Marcy Playground, Fastball, My Scarlet Life, The Atomic Fireballs, The Urge, Cirrus, Slipknot, Goldfinger, God Lives Underwater and Reverend Horton Heat.

Tickets for the event, which begins at noon this Friday at the Ankeny Airfield, are $12 before the day of the show, and increase to $25 at the door the day of the show.