Deep Sea Diver Returns to the Surface

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It’s not exactly inconspicuous, the approximately three-foot cube that, for years, has been an essential prop in Jessica Dobson’s live performances as Deep Sea Diver. With a reinforced metal frame along its edges and alternating red and cream opaque panelling, the DIY piece was first conceived as a mood-setting lightbox that could contrast against a darkened stage.

Over the years however, Dobson says the cube has “become this thing.” Speaking via Zoom from her home in Seattle, a comfy blue sweater of various incongruent patterns drapes her frame as she explains that, at some point, this luminescent piece of décor transformed into a musical lectern, a giant pedestal from which Dobson now regularly climbs to launch into her guitar solos.

When Deep Sea Diver was tapped to open for Pearl Jam on the grunge pioneers’ arena tour last year, Dobson leaned even further into the box’s unofficial function, going as far as emblazoning it with the words “GUITAR SOLO BOX” for everyone to see. “I almost took it off,” she says. “I was like, ‘I don’t want the people to think that it’s a joke, but tongue in cheek.’ Then I thought, ‘Ah, fuck it. I’m gonna keep it.’ And it ended up being the best, because everyone knows when I stand up on the box what’s going to happen.”

Dobson’s life hasn’t always been as flashy as her signature podium. This is especially true during the development of Deep Sea Diver’s upcoming fourth album, and Sub Pop debut, Billboard Heart. “I think the title in and of itself, reveals a lot—at least to me,” she says. “I thought of all the billboards you might pass in Texas that are covered over multiple times and there’s a new narrative on it. Every however many months or years, they paint a new thing on it, but you can still kind of see the paint chips underneath. There’s history; it all matters.” That became an image that propelled the album, Dobson’s embrace of the past, present and future.

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Dobson began her musical career at just 19 years old before finding steady work in her twenties as a professional musician, demonstrating her chops as a guitarist while performing with the likes of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beck and the Shins. She ultimately decided to enter a far more unpredictable landscape: a solo career. She self-released her first two albums in 2012 (History Speaks) and 2016 (Secrets) with the help of her drummer and husband, Peter Mansen. Dobson says that particular period of her career was as incredible and educational as it was emotionally challenging. “I had so many internal battles at the lowest points of just like, ‘Is this worth it? What am I doing? Look at what I’ve sacrificed.’ But that would get into victim mode and all kinds of shit and I’d have to remind myself, ‘No, you make art and you chose this. It’s hard. Sometimes it’s hard a lot of the time. This is the life we’ve chosen and it’s a beautiful one with a lot of ups and downs.’”

Like many artists, Dobson came to an even greater crossroads of uncertainty in 2020 and the standstill that came during the global COVID-19 pandemic. She had to decide whether or not it was worth releasing Deep Sea Diver’s completed third album, Impossible Weight. “I remember it being one of the most stressful decisions we made,” she recalls. “Do we just keep holding on to this to see when this ends, or just go for it and trust that it’s going to do what it’s going to do. And I think ultimately, it was the right decision to release it, because a lot of people, just from what I understand now, really needed that record.”

The proof of that need could be found in Dobson’s lyrical exploration of depression, escape, and distress, much of which was accentuated by just the right distorted riff, percussive thrum or seething solo. Delivering all of this with just a hint of light at the end of a very long tunnel, the gamble of Impossible Weight’s release resulted in a spot on Billboard’s Alternative chart and a #1 placement on Seattle-based indie rock radio station KEXP’s listener-voted, year-end list, where Deep Sea Diver beat out the likes of Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher and Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters.

By every measurement, Impossible Weight helped Deep Sea Diver achieve the most critical and commercial success of Dobson’s career. And yet, when it came time to carry the momentum of its accomplishments into her next record Dobson’s creative self-assuredness inexplicably stalled when she and her band started recording sessions in Los Angeles. “Internally I had blinders on of things that I just still hadn’t dealt with that were affecting my ability to hear my intuition,” she says. “Which is all you have when you’re making a record. I had a lot of fear going into this record. And even though I was reading books like Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act and all these mantra-type things, I was so jostled up internally to the point where it felt like I was on a little runway, the plane’s leaving and we’re about to take off, but I’m not ready.”

One of the biggest fears Dobson found herself confronting was failing to live up to not just everyone else’s expectations, but those of her own. When she was young, she was already regarded as a gifted multi-instrumentalist, even a musical prodigy, depending on who you asked. “I pick up things really quickly,” she explains. “And, as a result, there was a lot of, ‘Oh things are gonna really work out for you.’ ‘You’re doing a great job.’ And it sat in my DNA for a long time. And so, not being exactly where I hoped I would be at this point—in my lowest moments—that fear of failure was still really with me.”

Feeling as though she let herself, her band and anyone else who had taken time out of their lives to work on the record down, Dobson retreated back to Seattle and engaged in some needed self-care, which included addressing “other inner traumas” that she’s not ready to talk about, Dobson began correcting the narratives of self-criticism she had entombed within herself. “Inherently we’re all just living life and trying to figure our shit out,” she says. “And, ultimately, I just want to make art that is an expression of myself and the people that I’m collaborating with. It’ll do what it’s going to do in the world and I have no control of that.”

In the months that followed, Dobson started finding her footing again, not only writing new material, but revisiting the recordings she had previously deemed inadequate or botched in their execution. “Before the first trip to LA, I had recorded three songs here, mostly all first takes of me messing around at six in the morning in my basement studio,” she says. “One of them, ‘What Do I Know,’ I really stepped into. I love engineering, I love producing, I love mixing, I love being a nerd in the studio. But, I didn’t totally trust my ability, and we re-recorded that song when we went to LA, even though the whole time Peter was like, ‘This is really cool.’ But I couldn’t see it as being good enough at the time. It’s now a few months later and I listen to it again and I’m like, ‘Actually, this kind of rips and is awesome.’” Dobson was proud just hearing it again and witnessing her own perspective shift as she began to feel better emotionally, and she came up with tracks like the Madison Cunningham-assisted “Let Me Go,” and the anthemic, spiritual “Billboard Heart.”

Embracing a mindset of enjoying the process, Dobson became less picky about good and bad outcomes, returning to Los Angeles to finish Billboard Heart. For all the difficulty she had getting the record off the starting block, Dobson says that, once she was able to truly shut out “the noise,” she entered the most prolific period of her career. “I was just so unprecious with everything,” she says, “I was chopping up existing lyrics, keeping one line and writing a whole new song around it. It was a completely different experience than any other record I had made. I think just embracing the idea of, ‘you don’t know,’ where if you trust you’ve captured the spirit of something it doesn’t really matter.”

Throughout Billboard Heart, Dobson plumbs much of the emotional turmoil that previously stymied her inner compass. With arrangements once again buoyed by incisive guitar work, amp feedback and glimmering synths, Dobson delivers howling lines like “I’m welcoming the future by letting go of it” on the album’s title track, “I’m digging for worth” on “Shovel” and “So be sweet to me if I don’t ever stick the landing” on “Be Sweet.” Perhaps the most resonant phrase of Billboard Heart comes from the title of the album’s closing song, “Happiness Is Not a Given.” “That track came so quickly,” Dobson says. “It’s one of the most emotive and poetic of something of mine that came without grueling over it.”

Dobson now happily admits that Billboard Heart is full of imperfections, making it as beautiful to her as some of her favorite records to listen to, like David Bowie’s Brian Eno-assisted Berlin Trilogy. Her hope is that listeners will feel the same way, even when she’s not standing on her super-sized soapbox. “The things that are most important to me in this life now are making sure I’m in tune with myself, the world, and others, and making meaning even of the hardest things, either internally or externally, and not letting them deplete you,” she says. “I hope that this can be an album that gives people a little bit of rest from all the bullshit and just reminds people of who they really are and what they want.”

Mike Hilleary is a lifelong freelancer who has written for Paste, Vanity Fair, GQ, Inside Hook, FLOOD and Under the Radar. In 2020 he published his first book, On the Record: Music Journalist on Their Lives, Craft, and Careers. His second book, exploring the crossroads of musical artists and mental health, is due to be published in the spring of 2026.

Watch Deep Sea Diver’s Paste Session from 2019 below.

Deep Sea Diver Returns to the Surface

Throughout Billboard Heart, Jessica Dobson plumbs much of the emotional turmoil that previously stymied her inner compass. We caught up with the Seattle musician about the self-care that went into the making of her band’s new album.