Throughout 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.
“This is a record about grief, repair, and possibility,” Paoro says. “It’s about the karmic responsibility of being born, and a call to action to fight for the sacred life of what is not yet born.” She continues, “It’s a sobering look at the unsustainability of where we are as a human and more-than-human family with our intersecting injustices and inequalities, wars, ecocide, and empirical collapses, and it’s an ask that we don’t give up but join in the prayer and action of working towards collective liberation for all. This is a record that holds space for duality, paradox, contradiction, and transcending all of it. I hope it will serve as a salve, guide, and space holder for the times that are coming.”
Alongside the release, Paoro has shared the project’s lead single + video “Forgiveness Is,” a collective prayer for forgiveness.
“We are all witnessing so much horror in the world, and I have learned from my own experience that forgiveness can be a very powerful unlock out of the incomprehensibility of darkness,” Paoro explains. “I think part of what it’s going to take for us to evolve out of this place we are in collectively is some sort of radical forgiveness practice, which also includes what we have inherited from those who came before us and what we have contributed to. Forgiveness is such a high frequency to seek counsel from.”
“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,” she says. “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 to come up with the best possible offering to meet this moment.”
Featured image by Shane McCauley.
SOURCE: Official Bio
LINKS:
https://www.doepaoro.com/
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https://www.youtube.com/doepaoro
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0vckacoFWyeHKhqZVYlFEq