Indigo De Souza Charts a New Beginning

Introducing Endless Mode: A New Games & Anime Site from Paste

Read our announcement | See the 10 Best Games of 2025 (So Far)

It’s the hottest day of the summer in New York City, at 99 degrees on a Tuesday. Indigo De Souza, who traded North Carolina—where she had lived all her life—for Los Angeles in the past year, traveled to the city for a special, intimate fan event in Williamsburg. Her team is carefully preparing tables with watercolor sets, accompanied by a black-and-white poster of the colorful artwork her mother Kimberly Oberhammer painted for her new album, Precipice, her first release under Loma Vista. A large pack of water bottles is waiting to be unwrapped, ready for guests to beat the sweltering heat. In just a few hours, the small space will be packed with fans—some sharing the experience with pals who also hold a love for De Souza’s music, while others will arrive on their own and leave with new friendships.

In an Instagram post from a week earlier, De Souza asked fans to share their experience with her music for a chance to win an invitation to the intimate gathering, which, besides giving a preview of her LP, would feature a Q&A, an acoustic performance of a few of the new songs, and watercolor painting of her album art as a sweet souvenir of the experience. Many fans wrote in about how much De Souza’s music helped them along the way, from navigating breakups to grieving the loss of loved ones.

An hour before doors open, De Souza tells me at the space’s patio that she’s excited to connect with fans in this way again, after a similar event held in Los Angeles at Tea at Shiloh was a great success. “It was just amazing to have hand-picked people based on their comments on Instagram,” she shares. “And to have this little piece of a story that they told me through the comments, and then see them in person was really awesome.”

Most Popular

“I just would love to get into the flow of holding events every time I go through a city to invite people to the same space,” De Souza continues, “to just enjoy space together and connect.”

This event isn’t just a preview of De Souza’s album. It’s a glimpse into a new era, one marked by fresh starts and an expansive pop sound unlike her previous records. Precipice came at a pivotal period in De Souza’s life. In 2023, her publisher, Concord, suggested that the musician fly out to Los Angeles to do a blind session with a producer. “All I really knew was some information about them, what they’ve worked on in the past, and what their style is,” she recalls. She was paired with Elliott Kozel, a Minneapolis-born, Los Angeles-based producer and multi-instrumentalist who has collaborated with artists such as SZA, Lizzo, and Yves Tumor.

“Something really clicked. We instantly got along super well and worked well together,” she says. They wrote a song together, “Not Afraid,” within the first hour of their meeting. “It was pretty fast chemistry,” Kozel tells me over a phone call days later. “Once I realized we were making an awesome song, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, wow, I should really try not to fuck this one up.'” De Souza remembers writing the shimmery synth-pop song as an “ode to self-discovery,” inspired by her decision to fly out to LA and work with a stranger for the first time. It was a reminder to let go of expectations and live in the moment, welcoming new connections and change: “What, what does it look like, when you are free, when you are being true?” she sings. “When you let go, the people you love are free when they’re with you too.”

As someone who had flirted with pop before, crafting catchy sing-along anthems about heartbreak and self-sabotaging tendencies, like “Ghost,” “Kill Me,” and “How I Get Myself Killed,” her fateful pairing with Kozel was her moment to explore what a true Indigo De Souza pop song would sound like. While the process of writing with a brand-new collaborator was daunting, she took this opportunity to play to Kozel’s strengths and also share her “spirit” with him. De Souza wasn’t initially intending to make an album; she just wanted to find a new approach to her music. But being paired with Kozel was kismet. After their creative meet-cute, Kozel suggested to De Souza that she fly out to Los Angeles to continue to collaborate. She took him at his word and spent her time back and forth between Los Angeles and North Carolina to make Precipice.

“I produce for a lot of people, but there’s something that we have, just like inexplicable chemistry where we’re cranking out hits all the time,” Kozel says. “It feels like it comes easily. It takes us, usually, two days to make a song; they’ll just fly right out. Everything that we try seems to work, and then the song’s done. Hardly ever do we have to go back and re-record or fix things. The birthing process is always pretty easy and fun.”

Most of the songs on Precipice were written after meeting Kozel, with the exception of “Heartthrob,” a track that disguises its dark subject matter of surviving sexual assault with a jaunty melody, and “Be My Love,” a demo that had been in the vaults for years before being revisited for this album. Speaking about their collaborative dynamic, Kozel explains that De Souza comes up with the lyrics on the spot while he helps with the direction of the instrumentation. Sometimes, as a trusted friend and collaborator, De Souza would ask him for feedback on her writing, but as Kozel notes, De Souza is a gifted writer who seldom struggles with voicing her emotions through song beautifully.

“I’ll tear up. Sometimes [her lyrics] will emotionally affect me, when we’re working on the songs, listening to them over and over again. We’ll both cry a little bit sometimes in the studio,” he says. “But, in between that, it’s mostly just laughing and joking around and having fun, even when the songs are about dark things like suicide. We both have a similar sense of humor, which I think helps us get along in the studio.”

“When we’re working together, it’s definitely very playful and fun,” De Souza tells me. “I think something we both appreciate about each other is that we share a lot of darkness and depth to our personalities. Like we see the world in a very similar way. And part of that kind of darkness that we both share is that we both have a very dark sense of humor. And so we’re often able to make light of things that feel kind of hard to express.”

Precipice is rooted in the difficult decisions that come with leaving behind what no longer works for you as a way to find happiness. De Souza is shedding old skin, reborn as a confident woman who knows her worth, seeking out a new era after years of turmoil and heartache. Just as she was grappling with moving on from her painful past, she experienced a tragedy. In September of 2024, De Souza’s home in Asheville was flooded during Hurricane Helene, destroying her belongings. “I lost everything that I had. All of my earthly possessions went down the river or were covered in mud. There was 12 feet of water in my house,” she recalls. She had been on tour when it occurred, unable to salvage anything. “I came home as soon as I could after it happened and cleaned everything up as well as I could.”

The experience taught De Souza the importance of not focusing on material gains, but rather on what truly matters: connection and togetherness. “The community was so strong when [the flood] happened, and that was really beautiful,” she says. The painful experience also came with a silver lining: she now had the freedom to change her surroundings and start anew. She ended up moving to Los Angeles three months later, collaborating with Kozel again to let her emotions out and work on her follow-up to Precipice.

While coincidentally Precipice delves into the painful experience of moving on, it was written before that devastating moment. De Souza was contemplating relocating to Los Angeles to collaborate with Kozel further when she heard the news. “I had been thinking about moving to LA since I met Elliott because that collaboration became really important to me,” she explains. “It felt strange being so far away from him and not being able to create on a more daily or weekly basis. Then also, apart from that, having resources in LA, having many places to record and people to record with and people who want to play music with me who are down to connect and create together [influenced the move].”

While settling down in California helped her creatively flourish with Kozel, it was not a choice made lightly. “[Moving to Los Angeles] was a difficult decision to make, and I still feel very heavy-hearted about it,” De Souza admits. To the musician, trading Asheville for Los Angeles was a decision made strictly for her craft. “I like LA and I think it’s a great place, and I really enjoy myself there, but I also don’t know that it feels any more like home than North Carolina does. North Carolina will always feel like my ride or die.”

Though De Souza was born in Connecticut, North Carolina had been her home for most of her life. As a child, her single mother moved them to the small town of Spruce Pine. In high school, De Souza moved in with her older sister in Asheville, a city where she remained until her recent move to Los Angeles. “I decided that I would move [to California] for at least a year, if not two years, and then I’ll probably go back to North Carolina,” she explains of her plan. “I just wanted to give LA a chance and see what it’s like if I actually embrace it and engage with it for a longer term.” While her musical collaborations have come easily in Los Angeles, North Carolina has De Souza’s support system, both through her family and longtime friendships that have made her feel “free and able to express myself fully.” Moving to a place where people can be a “little more closed off” than what she is used to is new territory. “I’ve been really shy in LA and it has been hard to make friends,” De Souza admits.

Although making friendships in LA hasn’t been easy, De Souza and Kozel’s bond is stronger than ever. “She’s one of my closest friends at this point,” Kozel says. “It spills over outside of the studio where we hang out all the time and talk about our lives and everything. She’s a really strong woman whose creativity and ambition overwhelm her and take over.” Kozel feels a deep admiration for De Souza’s way of continuously working on bettering herself and “finding an easier way to navigate through the world,” adding that “she feels all of her emotions so strongly that they just kind of battle their way out of her musically, constantly.” “It’s obviously one of her strong points, but it can be difficult,” he elaborates. “It’s a classic artist problem. You feel everything too much, and it helps you write songs, but it also makes life a struggle.”

Precipice features De Souza learning to let go and have fun, but the follow-up to the LP takes a different approach, with emotionally heavy lyrics and an acoustic sound. It was written shortly after the destruction of her home, while she was grappling with the new life she had found in Los Angeles, having to start from scratch. De Souza recalls that with the heaviness of processing this loss, the songs “just came pouring out.”

“Feeling that comfort and having that space to create music again made me realize how special it was,” she shares. De Souza divulges that the next album is “very different from Precipice,” featuring “intimate sad songs” with a slower tempo, a sonic shift from De Souza’s previous indie rock material. “After the flood, it felt right to go back to my roots as more of a guitar player,” she says. “I didn’t play a lot of guitar on Precipice. But I leaned into guitar more on this next album; it’s a lot more grungy, not electronic.”

“She came out here [to Los Angeles] and we wrote all the songs quite quickly in the span of a few weeks, and LA caught on fire while she was here,” adds Kozel about Precipice‘s successor. “It’s a lot more raw. A little less pop and a little more sad and intense, in some ways.”

Before revisiting the heavy emotions that come with the forthcoming release once the press cycle arrives, De Souza wants to savor the levity and joy that Precipice brought her—and she wants her fans to find the strength and glee she uncovered while writing it, too. “I hope that when people listen to Precipice, they feel light and happy,” she says. “That anything is possible, and the world is their oyster, and they have the choice to express themselves and feel free in their bodies.”

Tatiana Tenreyro is Paste‘s associate music editor, based in New York City. You can also find her writing at SPIN, NME, PAPER Magazine, The A.V. Club, and other outlets.

COVER STORY | Indigo De Souza Charts a New Beginning

After being set up on a blind studio session with a producer by her publisher, the 28-year-old found creative fulfillment, leading to a new life in Los Angeles and her first proper pop album, Precipice.