Doria's Daydream is an album born out of momentum, curiosity, and the quiet upheaval of a woman in her thirties. Written over a concentrated 6-8 month period between late 2023 and early 2024, the record took shape during a time of deep creative focus, sparked in part by two songwriting courses with the LA-based School of Song, led by Kimbra and Adrianne Lenker. Many songs began as homework prompts, written under gentle time pressure that unexpectedly unlocked something freer and more instinctive.
Doria's Daydream is an album born out of momentum, curiosity, and the quiet upheaval of a woman in her thirties. Written over a concentrated 6-8 month period between late 2023 and early 2024, the record took shape during a time of deep creative focus, sparked in part by two songwriting courses with the LA-based School of Song, led by Kimbra and Adrianne Lenker. Many songs began as homework prompts, written under gentle time pressure that unexpectedly unlocked something freer and more instinctive.
The album follows Dear Dea's 2024 debut EP When You Go Home Again, which received early support from Spotify editorial, BBC 6 Music, Rinse FM, Jazz FM, Clash Magazine and Somewhere Soul. That EP introduced Dea's emotionally direct songwriting and genre-fluid approach, blending jazz, pop, and Latin influences rooted in her multicultural background.
On Doria's Daydream, those ideas expand and deepen. The album drifts through themes of longing and imagined escape, anxiety and shame, relationships in your thirties, and the strange weight of time. It reflects on the monotony of everyday routines and the ache of still missing New York after leaving the city in 2019, while also grappling with distance, immigration, and family. A life-affirming trip to her father's home country, Ecuador, further shaped the emotional core of the record, most notably on "The Internet," a song about family living so far away that the only place you see them is online.
Influenced by artists such as Ravyn Lenae, Nathy Peluso, Fabiana Palladino, and Mk.gee, as well as the stark emotional realism of Annie Proulx's short stories, Doria's Daydream balances intimacy with experimentation. The title comes from an almost-name, one her parents considered before she was born. It's fitting for a record that lives between reality and imagination, between who you are and who you might have been.
Rather than telling a single narrative, Doria's Daydream unfolds as a collection of moments: anxious spirals, humor, tenderness, memory, and creative risk, tied together by a distinct and deeply personal voice.
