Doe paoro
Living Through Collapse
OUT SEPTEMBER 19
CONTACT:
ROSIE BOYD // PUBLICIST
AVA KELLY // PUBLICIST
Over the course of her kaleidoscopic career, Doe Paoro has made her music into a vessel for transformation of all kinds: catharsis, awakening, the deliberate shedding of old patterns and worn-out beliefs. In creating her new album Living Through Collapse, the Costa Rica-based singer/songwriter embraced an even deeper intentionality and dreamed up a body of work aimed at catalyzing collective healing—an undertaking informed by her longtime experience in apprenticing with practitioners of shamanic plant medicine in the Peruvian jungle, as well as her work in leading sound baths and guided meditations. Built on her most unbridled and expansive output to date, Living Through Collapse ultimately serves as both sanctuary and sustenance, providing the clarity of mind and radiance of spirit needed to navigate an increasingly precarious world.
“In recent years, I’ve been consumed by an awareness of how the world seems to be in collapse—not just the environment, but also the intertwined systems and legacies of power, colonialism, capitalism, racism, and structural inequity, all driving us toward unsustainable and life-denying futures,” says the artist otherwise known as Sonia Kreitzer. “This album came from asking myself how we show up for that collapse, and how music can hold space for repair as well as the birthing of new possibilities.”
The first full-length from Doe Paoro since 2018’s Soft Power (a soul-leaning LP produced by Amy Winehouse collaborator Jimmy Hogarth), Living Through Collapse marks the latest entry in a sonically adventurous catalog that also includes 2015’s After (a moody convergence of R&B and synth-pop, made with members of Bon Iver’s creative circle). This time around, she assembled an eclectic mix of producers including Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), Chris Sholar (Esperanza Spalding, Solange), Lagartijeando (an Argentinian luminary known for inventively merging Latin folk and electronic music), and Liam Fletcher (a UK-based musician whose credits include Swiss singer/songwriter Danit). Co-produced by Devin Gati (who also helmed production on Doe Paoro’s 2022 EP Divine Surrendering) and partly recorded in Costa Rica with a lineup of local musicians, Living Through Collapse embodies an earthy yet resplendent sound that perfectly mirrors its globe-spanning origins. “The way we made this record was very mycelial,” notes Kreitzer, referring to the underground networks of filaments that enable complex communication among ecosystems. “Devin and I started these songs together and then reached out to people all over the world, with the goal of coming up with the best possible offering to meet this moment.”
While Living Through Collapse delves into far-reaching questions of conscious ancestry and inherited wounds (an inquiry explored on the soul-searching lead single “Forgiveness Is”), the album also draws much of its emotional power from a more intimate moment in Kreitzer’s life. “I went through a traumatic miscarriage a couple years ago, which is when the record first started to be conceived,” she says. “I was having this bodily experience of life existing and life leaving and attempting to hold both at the same time, and writing these songs really helped me through that process.” On “The Language of Past Lives,” she shares a heavy-hearted but luminous reflection on her miscarriage, adorning the gorgeously aching track with tender harmonies and lush guitar work. “In the past I’ve written very personal songs on the topics we tend to speak about more openly in our culture, like limerence and loss of love,” says Kreitzer. “For some reason we don’t give much space to miscarriage, and it felt meaningful to find a voice for that experience.”
Meanwhile, on “Teach Us of Endings,” Living Through Collapse looks outward for a more panoramic meditation on cycles of life. Produced by Lagartijeando and co-written with author/activist Alnoor Ladha, the dance-ready track channels a sublimely joyful energy by way of its bouncing percussion and effervescent textures (sculpted in part through the use of an Andean flute known as the quenacho). “In terms of archetypes, this record feels both like death doula and midwife—if something is ending, then there’s also the responsibility of bringing in the new,” says Kreitzer. “‘Teach Us of Endings’ is about looking to our wise and well elders and asking how we find celebration amidst death—how do we go about dancing our way to the end?”
Despite the gravity of many of its lyrical themes, Living Through Collapse often achieves a profoundly uplifting effect, thanks largely to the spellbinding force of Kreitzer’s voice. A chameleonic and exquisitely gifted vocalist whose background includes studying Tibetan folk opera, she delivers a number of the album’s songs in Spanish, including “Rosa”—a quietly enchanting track inspired by a weeks-long period spent in the jungle engaging in a healing process with specific master plants. “That song came through during what they call a plant diet, where you spend weeks in the jungle relating with the plants,” she says. “One aspect of the lineage I find really fascinating is that the maestros communicate their healing through songs, which feel almost like sonic acupuncture. With every plant diet that I engage in, I can feel it strengthening my voice and my ability to share the insights that have come to me.”
Closing out with the hypnotic invocation of “22 Amens,” Living Through Collapse partly emerged from a desire to deepen the purposeful quality of Doe Paoro’s music. “After I released Divine Surrendering, I had people tell me how they listened to those songs while birthing; one person even told me they played a song for someone who was passing,” she says. “I’d never heard anything like that with my older records, and it’s incredibly touching to know that people have brought my music into their lives that way.” And in looking toward her future live shows, she hopes to create a uniquely communal experience of her songs. “When I visualize the show I see me on the floor with different configurations of musicians, all of us trading instruments throughout the performance,” says Kreitzer. “It feels right to break down the hierarchy of the stage and bring everyone into the circle, so that it’s all of us singing together.”