daste. crafts a euphoric mix of alt-indie-pop with R&B and soul influences, celebrated for their infectious laid-back sound. Their upcoming tour aligns with their recent release of ‘Atlas’– a single exploring life’s challenges and resilience, drawing inspiration from the Greek myth of Atlas to delve into themes of personal growth and endurance.
Since their debut with ‘Thinkin Of‘ under Mammal Sounds Records in late 2018, daste. has amassed over 42 million streams on Spotify with hits like ‘Telephone (What’s Your Name?)‘ and their debut album dusk&dawn. They’ve captivated audiences at sold-out shows in Gold Coast and Brisbane, supported renowned artists like Lastlings and Boo Seeka, and earned nominations at the Gold Coast Music Awards and beyond.
Q.1 What do you expect from America as first-time performers out here.
I’m keen to show them we’re not first-time performers, for a start. We put a lot of time and dedication into performing live and putting on a good show. A lot of our feedback regarding our live set has been mostly positive so we expect americans to love us, but then again, we’re excited to see the difference between the fans in Australia and the fans on the other side of the world.
We’re also excited to get to know the country a little more. We’ll be driving all around to make these shows so we’re super excited to see these spots that we only get to see in movies or tv. Hopefully we make it back in one piece…
Q.2 Which song do you think resonates the most with American audiences and why?
If we were to guess, it’d be something they’d never expect. Some of our old songs tend you can feel a lot of energy in the room probably because they’re very memorable and catchy. We’re going to say it would probably be ‘expectations’ because it’s very well written song and we execute that live pretty well. ‘About us’ also has a bit of captivating energy to it and we’re also used to getting a lot of feedback on that song too.
Q.3 What’s the whole message and purpose of your music?
That it’s going to be alright. A lot of our lyrics always resolve to everything being okay. You could say it’s very cliché to have a happy ending, but they do exist and it’s never not important enough to believe so. Life is very complicated now, and nothing is simple as long as we strive for more. Our songs like to put those ideas to bed and bring back the simple joys of life such as love, hope, peace and patience – the way life should be… because the sun will rise, either way. With or without.
Our new album coming out is passing on a similar but new message, kind of like the second testament. We believe the message stands for having the will to never give up and forever chase your dreams and hopes because its all worth it in the great scheme of things. that’s how simple life should be but there’s a fine line for what it takes to make your dreams come true – you wake up.
Q.4 What’s the story behind Atlas?
We just wanted to try reinvent the daste. sound by trying something different – more 808 heavy similar to Travis Scott and lil Uzi. The more it was heavily influenced by this genre of music, it reminded us of this one lyric from our song ‘SOBER’, which was ‘The world I want to take hold of, puts weight on my shoulders.’
From there, we were just talking about atlas, the titan who lifts the world and the heavens on his shoulders. The lyrics revolve around how the expectations of the world is only heavy by how much you let it weigh on you. No one else carries your world like you do, so believe in yourself!
There’s a lot of glorified labor going around in Australia recently and young adults forget to rest before the weight of the world or expectations gets to them. We all hold our own personal worlds in life, some being heavier than others, but what’s important to remember is that nobody is as strong as you and only you can bare the weight of your world. You are your own atlas, so believe in yourself!
Q.5 How has your sound and whole artistic attitude evolved since your debut?
Another good question, damn. I think our sound and our artistic attitudes are two different things. We try to evolve or reinvent our sound with every new song because that’s how we evolve as artist, so to speak. We don’t want to be held down to one specific genre or sound so that we can hopefully be a one-stop-shop for music. Hell, we’ll make a country song one day but that all comes with time the more we do it.
With our new album on the way, we’ve found ourselves evolving more as artists individually expanding to new styles of music and collaborating with all types of different artist. our attitudes have greatly evolved around music but it will always feel like theres so much further to go – so much more to learn about music and producing in this day and age. We like to stay humble with our music so we can’t really put a finger on what we sound like, which is why this is probably a better question for everyone else. The whole point of being original is to be a whole new thing and there just ain’t a box that we tick yet for ourselves – it’s better if you tell us.
