Doe Paoro - After

150-gram vinyl

Plated and pressed at Quality Record Pressings

As a songwriter and vocalist, Doe Paoro seeks both to uplift and unsettle. For her ANTI label debut After, the New York-bred, L.A.-based artist worked in close collaboration with producers Sean Carey (drummer/supporting vocalist for Bon Iver) and BJ Burton (musician/producer/engineer whose past credits include POLIÇA, Sylvan Esso, The Tallest Man On Earth and Volcano Choir), deepening her musical repertoire into a dense hybrid of R&B, synth-pop, and indie-leaning electro that's rooted in earthy minimalism.

"I'm used to just having a piano and working with that," says Doe, "but with this album we built an entire world with the sonics alone." In early 2013, with a batch of songs ready to be recorded, Doe reached out to Bon Iver leader Justin Vernon on a whim to see if he'd be interested in contributing to the new music in some way. "I didn't know Justin at the time, but I sent out an email and his manager got back to me," she says. Vernon ended up mixing one of the tracks, and from there, a relationship with the extended Bon Iver-family blossomed, with Carey and Burton taking the reins to co-produce After.

"There's an assumption that pop music needs to be dumbed down," she says. "But I think pop can be surprising and make you uncomfortable sometimes. It can ask you to think about something you hadn't considered before, and maybe awaken a place in yourself that you hadn't been giving attention to."