d4vd: “I don’t want to make things that sound like they’re lifeless”
If you’ve been paying attention to d4vd’s story so far, you’ll be familiar with his origins – tucked away in his sister’s closet, making music just so he wouldn’t get copyright strikes on his gaming videos. Since those humble beginnings, he has flourished, earning a tour support slot with SZA in 2023, contributing songs to TV show soundtracks like Arcane and Invincible, and developing his artistry into something with significant emotional depth.
But when it came time to make his debut album ‘Withered’, though, the 20-year-old found himself returning to that same closet, even after recording in studios in London. “When I’m in the closet, I’m engineering and in charge of my vocals,” he tells NME over Zoom, one week before the album’s release. “When I’m in the studio and it’s time to do vocals, I usually have someone else do it because I can’t be in two places at once. Sometimes, they don’t know exactly what I want, or a lot of engineers will say, ‘Oh, just fix it in post’, but I’m one of those artists who likes to hear the final product of my vocals as I’m doing it.”
Re-recording songs he’d made in the studio in the closet, he says, made them feel more true to life. “[They] came out with such an imperfection to them,” he explains. “The situation [in the song] you don’t get to relive – you get one shot at it. So I like my music to do that, too.”
The making of ‘Withered’ sounds a little fraught – you made a bunch of pop songs and scrapped them, made a bunch of R&B songs and scrapped them. How did you find your groove again and what was right for this album?
“It was a very introspective process. I had went to London and I was like, ‘I’m gonna spend two weeks here in this sad, gloomy place’ – the vibes were just perfect for what I wanted to do and the mindset I wanted to be in. The title of my album, ‘Withered’, is like when a rose grows and then it decays and dies, returning back to the dirt. So I wanted to use this process to grow and also to take myself back to the soil where I started. I was just thinking about my own music and all the accomplishments I had amassed, and how my creative process changed throughout the past two years, and how I could go back to that mindset and the things that made my music special and unique.”
Instead of turning to other artists for inspiration, then, you were turning to yourself and what you’d already done.
“Yeah, I [was] just filtering through my own work and how I really created a genre. I had to go back to that and realise that all of the data and information I was reaching for was already there – on BandLab, on my phone, in previous file sessions.”
Did going through this process of writing and scrapping songs help you uncover more of what your musical DNA is?
“Oh, absolutely. A big part of creation is destruction. I feel like you can’t really build something without the foundation being laid out for you. When I was making all these pop and R&B songs, it was more like testing the waters. There was some people telling me the pop route was the right way to go and I’m so good at this, I’m so good at that, but sometimes it doesn’t matter how good you are. I could be the best pop artist in the world, but my music still be stale and nobody feel any emotion from it. I don’t want to make things that sound like they’re lifeless. After the project was done and I listened all the way through, it felt like a complete body of work and I was so just so proud of what I had.”
Let’s talk about some of this album’s songs – ‘What Are You Waiting For’ feels like it has the potential to be a big live moment…
“I was in Tokyo, actually, when I was recording this. I got sent the beat right before a show and I was just looking at the sky in Shibuya outside my hotel room. I’m really talking to myself – it’s like I’m revisiting myself in a way, and I’m asking myself, ‘What am I waiting for? Everything I want is right here’. The whole song is basically a love letter to myself, almost.”
Kali Uchis features on ‘Crashing’. What do you love about her and what she brings to a song?
“The number one thing I love about her is her work ethic. She’s so fast and I like to work very, very quick. I was in Houston writing this song, and there was something missing in the second verse. I tried so many different melodies, and I just couldn’t crack it. I was like, ‘Maybe this needs a female vocalist’ and I texted Kali. She hopped on the song the next day, literally sent me the verse back the next day.”
How do you decide when a song needs a feature or it’s best just you?
“It’s a hit or miss type thing. There’s some things I can’t be so precious about. I like to make the song feel like it’s building the entire time, so the second verse always has to be better than the first. If I can’t think of something that does, somebody else has got to try and take on that mantle and fulfil that purpose. There needs to be a need fulfilled for me to have a feature on a song.”
You’re someone who’s been touted as the next big thing or one to watch over the last couple of years. Who, for you, are artists that people should be keeping an eye on?
“Malcolm Todd is doing something in the indie/alternative rock space that not a lot of artists are doing right now. MOIO is also on the same thing – it’s just this resurgence of garage-sounding rock. I do bedroom pop stuff and I’m good at making people cry, but that genre, that Dominic Fike [stuff] that gives you energy… there’s this emotional angst that’s logged in a lot of new music right now that Malcolm and MOIO have perfected.
“Bryant Barnes is bringing back cinematic music, and Yung Kai is like the super beachy, take a stroll in the sand type music that not a lot of people are making right now either. So they all have their respective places that I think they’re gonna shine a light on and go very far.”
d4vd’s album ‘Withered’ is out now via Darkroom/Interscope. A BandLab Extended Edition with two bonus tracks is also available
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Rhian Daly
NME
