Healing Through Music

"Living Through Collapse is my fourth album, and it feels markedly different from my first three. Earlier in my career, my songwriting was around themes women are often encouraged (and rewarded) to focus on in pop music- romantic relationships, generally. I remember reading a review of my music that referred to me as a "torch singer" and cringing. That woke me up."

"In hindsight, those songs were true in their own way, but they were just a sliver of my lived experience. When I had a miscarriage in 2023, I thought about how I had never heard a song about a miscarriage before, but at least 10 percent of pregnancies end in one. That made me think a lot about which experiences are invisibilized and how art can help change that, which drove my songwriting on "The Language of Past Lives." With this record, I've come into a deeper relationship with music, trusting it can hold my full complexity."

Doe Paoro frames Living Through Collapse as a healing album that merges personal and collective repair. The record departs from prior pop-focused themes and embraces questions of ancestry, revolution, grief, and visibility. A 2023 miscarriage prompted attention to overlooked experiences and shaped specific songs, while pandemic pause triggered reflection on capitalism, climate, and structural inequities. Paoro applies skills from designing sound baths and guided meditations to recording and performance, shaping music that alternates between soothing and energizing textures. The work aims to hold complexity and provide a space for communal emotional processing and transformation.

Read at Psychology Today