Tell her she’s the next Gwen Stefani, and she’ll laugh at you. Tell her she’s the next Trent Reznor, and she’ll embrace you. Tell her she can’t do something, and she’ll do it.

“I’m such a fighter,” Sister Soleil singer Stella Katsoudas said from her Chicago apartment. “All I need is for someone to tell me I can’t do it, and I will. It’s such a motivation for me. I just want to say ‘watch me.'”

And so she did. And everyone who thought she could never do it watched.

Now Katsoudas is on the verge of signing a contract with a major record label. In conjunction with her first single, “Red,” Katsoudas’ self-written, self-recorded and self-arranged debut, Drown Me Into You, has become a mainstay on alternative charts across the Midwest.

Watch out, world, you’re about to meet a one-of-a-kind, do-it-yourselfer, who managed to boost her own career with a great idea and an amount of determination yet to be challenged by anyone in the music industry.

“It’s my war story,” Katsoudas said about how she formed Sister Soleil. “I never get sick of telling it. I mean, who gets sick of war stories?”

Katsoudas’ war story began two years ago, when she first conceptualized the idea of combining aggressive industrial music with pretty, pop vocals.

While recording vocals for such national acts as Chemlab, Ministry and Die Warzau, the singer hooked up with industrial producer H. Beno.

“He liked the idea; we just needed money to record,” Katsoudas explained. “So I put this big ad in the paper that said I was looking for an investor. It was the cheesiest thing.”

But it worked. In fact, Katsoudas received more than 10 calls. The only problem was that everyone wanted to give her small amounts, and she was advised not to deal with multiple investors.

Katsoudas eventually showed enough desire in the project that Beno decided to provide the funds. They went on to record Drown Me In You at Chicago Trax studio and began the search for a label soon after.

“I found out that very few record companies will even listen to un-solicited material,” Katsoudas said. “So that’s when I made up Katharsis Records and became Sarah K., head of the Katharsis publicity department.

“I made these really colorful postcards with my picture on them and started all these new marketing tactics. And now, not only was I getting through [to the record companies], but a lot of them were interested in coming out to see the band play.”

This posed a new problem for Katsoudas — she didn’t have a band.

“I went around to all of the bands that I had been recording with at the time and basically hand-picked my band,” Katsoudas said. “I would just walk in and say ‘I recorded with you, you owe me a bassist.'”

After scoring a Saturday night slot at Chicago’s famed Metro club, Katsoudas still had holes to fill, such as getting people to come see a band no one had heard of.

“I went out and got three of my best-looking friends and we literally hit the streets,” she said. “It was total eye-candy. We handed out free tickets to the show and basically hyped Sister Soleil.”

Katsoudas’ project was finally completed and Sister Soleil’s opening night went even better than planned. The band played for a crowd of 950, managed to sell 800 discs and found a manager, all in one night.

“So what basically started out as a ploy became a real running, fully-active label,” she said.

Katsoudas’ label-founding story is so impressive that some major record labels have asked her at least to work for them, if not sign with them. But Katsoudas said she may keep her label and sell it to a larger company.

“I’m more confused now than I ever have been,” Katsoudas said about her recent label-scouting trip to New York. “At least I have been eating really well. I probably went out to eat 15 times last week.”

The singer said she plans to tackle the label situation by taking baby steps. “But it’s really hard to do after taking all of these giant leaps,” she said.

Katsoudas said she looks at signing with a major label as a chance to be more proactive with issues she feels strongly about. “God gave me this talent for a reason, and I want to use it for that,” she said. “One thing the world needs is more heros.

“I want kids to know they have a choice. Music and drugs have nothing in common, and I’m just out to prove that they absolutely do not go hand-in-hand. I want kids to realize that they don’t have to do drugs for any reason.”

The singer credits a very spiritual and progressive home for her lifelong dedication to abstaining from drugs, alcohol and illicit sex. She said being a musician can often mean that kids look to her as an example.

“It’s kind of a sick power in a way, to have such a huge responsibility,” she said. “Some people are stars, and they don’t do anything with it. I could never do that. I would feel selfish.

“I’m here to prove that music can unify the world.”

Katsoudas’ first recording attempt is a unification in itself. She describes the record as blending “all kinds of feelings, whether it be passion, lust [or] anger.”

“My songs are basically journal entries turned into songs,” she said. “[‘Red’] is about escaping the world. We all have days like that, when we just want to jump out the window and fly away.”

Drown Me Into You also unifies industrial with pop, a combo that has led Katsoudas to be labeled “Trent Reznor’s long-lost sister.”

“I love that,” she said. “Trent Reznor is the perfect drug. What he did for industrial music is brilliant. He took bits and pieces from everything and made industrial what it is today.”

Reznor isn’t the only modern rock standout Katsoudas has been compared to. For many, her baby-dollish appearance brings No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani to mind.

“It just happens because we’re both female,” she said. “Gwen is really into that 1940s look. I grew up in the rave scene, so loudness has always been my thing. I don’t own anything that you can’t see from five miles away.”

Sister Soleil will play two shows at People’s Bar and Grill on Saturday night.

Smilin’ Jack will open an all-ages show at 6 p.m., and Hello Dave will open at 10 p.m.. Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 the day of the show.