Indigo De Souza has a behavior of taking phrases that sound doomy and turning them into life-affirming mantras. She did that with the title of her final album, 2023’s ‘All Of This Will Finish’: a cry of despair that’s additionally a reminder to benefit from the belongings you love when you can. And he or she does it once more along with her latest document, ‘Precipice’. Perhaps it conjures photos of standing on a crumbling clifftop, however possibly it’s additionally about being on the sting of a breakthrough and diving proper in.
“I really feel like I’m all the time present process actually intense modifications – actually fast shifts into completely completely different realities,” De Souza says now, talking over Zoom from a again porch amid tour rehearsals. “I’ve had so many wild ups and downs inside relationships in my life, and inside my physique and my mind. I believe I simply favored that concept of all the time being on the precipice of one thing new, and it being actually scary but in addition discovering methods to embrace it and see it as a constructive factor.”
De Souza first broke out along with her distinctive model of open-hearted indie-rock – combining grungey guitars with casually profound lyricism and astonishing vocals – in Asheville, North Carolina, the place she’d lived since she was 16. She signed to the revered indie label Saddle Creek Information after the discharge of her first document, 2018’s ‘I Love My Mother’, and extra acclaim adopted with the 2 glorious follow-ups, 2021’s ‘Any Form You Take’ and ‘All Of This Will Finish’, which each handled the heavy intricacies of heartbreak and psychological well being struggles. However with ‘Precipice’, she wished to do one thing completely different, and headed to Los Angeles with the intention of creating an all-out pop album.
“I had this romantic concept in my head: I’ll go to LA, discover some producer and all my pop visions will come to life”
“I really like pop music, and I really like the way in which it makes me really feel,” she says, mentioning Charli XCX, Mura Masa and, slightly sheepishly, Justin Bieber as a number of present favourites. “I actually wanted a break from writing albums which might be unhappy and heavy, and diving into actually deep, darkish topics. I wished to jot down one thing that embodied the sensation of pleasure that pop music gave me.”
This doesn’t imply that ‘Precipice’ is all ethereal escapism. There are definitely some mild, tongue-in-cheek moments, like the way in which ‘Crush’ combines double entendres about oral intercourse with the giddiness of recent love. However a lot of the document is as piercing and uncooked as De Souza has ever been – it’s simply that confessions of crushing heartbreak like ‘Crying Over Nothing’ and musings on mortality like ‘Not Afraid’ are cloaked in bouncy rhythms and infectious synth refrains. As an alternative of watering down her feelings, she makes use of the melodrama of pop to enlarge them.
De Souza sees it as “a observe in simplifying”. “As an alternative of talking in riddles or in metaphors, I simply communicate in precisely the phrases that might take advantage of sense,” she says. “I felt like, how particular wouldn’t it be to jot down a track that has tremendous significant lyrics that hopefully would assist somebody by way of one thing, but in addition sounds so accessible {that a} wider viewers may hear it and get one thing from it?”
“I wished to jot down one thing that embodied the sensation of pleasure that pop music gave me”
Flying out to fulfill with producers and embark on co-writing classes for the primary time, De Souza noticed Los Angeles as a glamorous new begin. “I had this romantic concept in my head: I’ll go to LA and it’ll be the large metropolis and I’ll discover some pop producer and all my pop visions will come to life,” she laughs. “And yeah, I imply… that’s what occurred.”
The producer in query ended up being Elliott Kozel, who’s labored with Finneas, Lizzo, Yves Tumor and a bunch of different large names. He was the primary producer De Souza met with, and she or he immediately felt she had discovered a musical soulmate. “I left that day feeling so excited, like I’d created this collaboration with somebody that I knew was gonna be actually necessary,” she says. “We obtained actually deeply into this circulate collectively – to the purpose the place it actually felt like we kinda had one thoughts. We didn’t even have to speak anymore, we’d simply be within the room guffawing and making loopy voices and enjoying issues.”
Working with Kozel in LA, the place she was sheltered from the dramas and heartbreaks of her historical past in North Carolina, De Souza began to really feel like she was “on a trip” from her actual life. “I felt nameless, and like something was potential on this model new world,” she says. A matter of months after ending the album, although, actuality got here crashing exhausting.
Final September, De Souza was on tour when the information got here that North Carolina had been devastated by Hurricane Helene. Cellphone service and electrical energy again dwelling was down, so De Souza and her bandmates have been unable to succeed in any family members. They have been contractually obligated to play that evening’s present and some others earlier than they might get again dwelling. When she did return, De Souza discovered that her dwelling – a transformed church through which she usually hosted acoustic reveals or artwork occasions – had been destroyed.
De Souza and her roommates have been compelled to camp whereas they discovered extra everlasting shelter. Unusually, she appears again on these occasions fondly: Associates from the local people would come to the camp and they might cook dinner collectively, play board video games, and assist one another by way of that debilitating time.
“That’s one thing that I’ll all the time maintain actually expensive to my coronary heart, the way in which that individuals banded collectively and simply had a lot love and openness in direction of one another,” she says. “It was actually, actually particular.” She additionally arrange a Gofundme, which raised $30,000 earlier than it was closed. “I’m blown away by how lovely my group is, each on-line and within the bodily world,” she wrote on the web site in response.
De Souza headed out to LA once more to make one other new album that handled the destruction of her dwelling and the emotional fallout, which she hopes to launch early subsequent 12 months. “It’s undoubtedly not like ‘Precipice’,” she says. “I began writing extra grungey and experimental songs – extra again to my roots.” With most of her belongings now becoming right into a suitcase, she realised she didn’t need to return to Asheville, the place she solely spent her time wishing she may very well be in LA collaborating with Kozel anyway. She’s now residing in LA completely.
The title of ‘Precipice’ turned out to be prophetic: De Souza was on the verge of not only a completely different musical course, however a wholly new life. “Each time we’d document I knew we have been doing one thing actually particular, and I knew that it was resulting in one thing, however I didn’t know what,” she says. “Finally, this album is what led me to shift my life in such an enormous method that I ended up shifting throughout the nation.” Primarily based within the coronary heart of the American music business and with a brand new, larger label in Loma Vista, the discharge of the document sees her on a brand new precipice – maybe of indie-pop stardom, or continued experimentation and collaboration. No matter comes of it, it’s thrilling to observe De Souza make the leap.
Indigo De Souza’s album ‘Precipice’ is out now through Loma Vista
