Melbourne musician Daine has turned a period of professional collapse, personal loss and severe mental ill health into their debut album, In Endless Awe & Agony, a pop record shaped by what they describe as “total surrender”.
The 23-year-old, who first attracted attention with emo-inflected hyperpop, is now preparing for an international breakthrough. Singles including PQC and Love Love (Love Love) have gained attention online, while praise from The New York Times and Pitchfork has been followed by remixes from Bassvictim and Porches.
Daine’s growing profile has taken them from parties in Los Angeles and New York to international festivals, including appearances alongside Underscores. They were also the sole featured artist on Ninajirachi’s I Love My Computer last year.
Yet the sudden attention has arrived while Daine is still living with their parents, a situation they recognise in Lena Dunham’s memoir Famesick. Dunham writes about finding success at 23 while remaining financially insecure and uncertain about the future.
“I’m still living with my mum and dad, I still don’t know what’s going on, but it seems to all be happening at once, and I don’t think you can ever prepare for that,” Daine said.
The singer was signed by Warner Music at 16 after early SoundCloud releases brought them to the label’s attention. They were promoted as a major Australian hope for hyperpop and worked in Los Angeles with Dylan Brady of 100 Gecs, while Charli XCX became a mentor.
But the promise of a major-label career was accompanied by pressure and financial difficulty. Daine continued working in a bar and, in 2024, announced that Warner Music had dropped them. They were left without a label or management and in thousands of dollars of debt.
“I was 16, got found by a major, and I think as a developing artist that can be counterintuitive because you just get lost in that system,” Daine said.
They said the experience had ultimately been necessary, despite the hardship. “I needed that freedom to do some soul-searching,” they said.
Daine’s debut album follows a period of crisis
The period that followed included the death of Daine’s grandmother, the end of their longest relationship and time in a psychiatric ward. They also experienced financial hardship and described having people around them who were harmful.
“I thought nothing would ever change, that it would never get better, that there was nothing for me to do in this life,” Daine said.
They disclosed that they had made a suicide attempt and woke in hospital after suffering a seizure. “It was just hard,” Daine said, adding that artists should be shown “a lot of grace” in an industry that can be relentless.
Recovery took about a year. Daine worked with close collaborators including Ninajirachi, Lonelyspeck, Darcy Baylis and Lucy Blomkamp at a beach house, where they developed their first post-Warner Music project, last year’s I Want the Light to Swallow Me Whole.
The new album emerged from that process and is built around the Jungian concept of individuation, described by Daine as the integration of the conscious and unconscious self. They initially struggled to accept the record, returning from sessions upset and convinced they could no longer write music.
It was only after showing early demos to their former partner, musician Curtis Everett Pawley, who executive-produced the album, that Daine began to reconsider the work.
“That was coming from a place of insecurity and self-hate,” they said. “I wasn’t ready to acknowledge those parts of myself, but doing that was the best thing I’ve ever done for my well-being.”
The album’s lead single, PQC, confronts career failure and emotional damage through acceptance. Daine said the song represented a decision to stop resisting the possibility that things might go wrong.
“PQC is about total surrender, that’s what healed me,” they said. “That’s what got me out of that rut because it’s freeing to just be like, ‘Okay, if everything has already been so f—ed, let’s just hang around a little longer and see if it gets unf—ed.’”
The song also marks a shift in Daine’s sound. Past work relied heavily on distortion, autotune and 808s, while the new album makes more room for direct vocals and exposed songwriting. Daine and Baylis have described the style as “tweemotronica”.
“I hid behind a lot of sonic distortion and effects in the past because I was afraid of myself,” Daine said. “I wanted honest songwriting. I wanted it to feel awkward. I wanted to peel back a lot of layers.”
That change is reflected in the album’s brighter visual world, replacing the goth-black aesthetic associated with Daine’s earlier work with pastel colours and playful pop textures. They said the difference reflected an improvement in their mental health.
“I stopped resonating with a darker visual aesthetic because my mental health improved,” Daine said. “I wanted it to feel whimsical and liberating.”
In Endless Awe & Agony is out now. Daine will perform at Sydney’s Metro Social on November 13 and 14, Brisbane’s Black Bear Lodge on November 19 and Melbourne’s Max Watts on November 21. They are also scheduled to appear at Laneway Festival and Golden Plains Festival.
Anyone worried about their own or someone else’s mental health can contact the Mental Health Line on 1800 011 511 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.
