With a New Pop Record—and New California Lifestyle—Indigo De Souza Finds Clarity

Vogue

5 days ago

Vogue: Has writing always been a salve for you? Or can it be the opposite, where writing becomes difficult because it's how you process things, and…sometimes you don't want to process things.
Indigo De Souza: Oh, both, absolutely. Sometimes it feels really easy to process emotions through music, and it's flowing out of me. And then I can be quite stubborn about writing, because of how much it makes me face what I'm feeling. I don't really know how to write from anywhere that isn't a deeply emotional space. Sometimes I can feel hesitant to pick up the guitar. I force myself to do it. I'll be very, very emotional about something and I'll know that it would help to play guitar and write.
With what you've been through, I wonder how you relate to your previous body of work now?
All of my past albums are really special to me in different ways, and the music is very close to my heart. Every album that I make feels very different from the last one, and it feels like I'm always moving through different modalities of writing. So when I listen to past music, sometimes it's almost mystifying to me how it even happened. Sometimes I can't even remember writing a song, or how I was trying to present the emotions within that song. I was thinking about 'Always': It's so intense, and the way that we play it live is really specific—there's a lot of screaming. How I wrote it and what I wanted to do with it is a blur. I'm very present with the songs I'm making, but the ones I've made in the past are like ghosts.
'Not Afraid' was the first song that was written for Precipice. What were those emotions you were using?
Honestly, I was just trying to connect with Elliot and impress him. Within the first hour, I knew he was special. I liked his energy and way of working. I'd never done a blind session before, but we just clicked in every way. I wanted to put my best foot forward, with my boldest lyrics and way of being. He made me feel comfortable enough to do that too.