Dani Stocksdale Talks Whatever This Is, Letting Go, and Making the Details Count

Some records hit on the first listen and somehow get better every time you come back.

Dani Stocksdale’s Whatever This Is is one of them.

The seven-track EP is one of the most immediately exciting indie-pop releases we have heard in a while. The vocals are ridiculously good. The production is detailed without ever feeling crowded. The writing is funny, intimate, occasionally obsessive, and specific enough to feel lived in. Most importantly, there genuinely is not a song here that feels like the one you skip to get to something better.

“Bug Eyes” is an instant pull. “Cigarette Rush” has that slightly hazy, late-night quality that makes you want to live inside it. “Magnetic” earns its title. “Sexy” and “Comety” let the quieter edges of Dani’s writing come forward, while “Pretty Thing” and “Again” make the whole thing feel bigger than a collection of singles.

It is cohesive without every song sounding alike, which is harder to pull off than people make it look.

Brian told Dani as much when the two sat down for Everyday Jams.

“We do a lot of interviews and a lot of features,” he told her, “and your EP is definitely a personal favorite of both mine and Taylee’s.”

Her response was immediate.

“Damn, I’m honored.”

We meant it.

Whatever This Is, Exactly

The title started with “Bug Eyes.”

Dani had been writing constantly after moving to Los Angeles, working with new producers and slowly realizing that a group of songs she had made separately were beginning to sound like they belonged together.

Whatever This Is was one of the first titles she wrote down.

The phrase kept coming up in her life outside the studio too. There were conversations with family members asking what exactly she was doing in Los Angeles, the strange pressure of explaining an unconventional career path, and relationships that did not fit neatly into traditional definitions.

Eventually, “whatever this is” started describing more than the music.

“Nothing in life is defined,” Dani says. “It’s all, like, the way I described it once was like a lava lamp. It’s just kind of flowing.”

For someone who admits she can be a control freak, making the EP became an exercise in loosening her grip.

“The less you try to control it, the easier it’s gonna be,” she says. “It’s been a process of me learning to let go and kind of embrace whatever this is rather than hide that answer from people.”

The songs themselves lean more heavily into relationships, but making and releasing them gave the phrase another meaning.

“This relationship is whatever this is, and then my life is whatever this is.”

That uncertainty could easily make for a record that feels vague. Dani does the opposite.

She gets incredibly specific.

The Notes App Is Doing Heavy Lifting

Dani is a lyrics-first writer.

And yes, everything starts in the Notes app.

“It’s chaotic,” she laughs when Brian asks whether hers is organized.

There are folders for song ideas, song seeds, fragments from different months, and whatever else has made it into her phone before a session. She generally brings those pieces into the room and lets the melody grow alongside the production rather than arriving with a fully mapped-out demo.

That approach leaves a lot of room for personality.

“Bug Eyes” began partly because Dani wanted to use the word “wingspan” and loved the image of two people getting close enough to kiss. Its second verse became loaded with details specific enough that she is fairly certain the person behind it knows exactly who he is.

“Cigarette Rush” began as a phrase dropped into her phone one night and became a song the following day.

She also does not rewrite herself into oblivion.

“I feel like there’s something honest and raw about the first time you approach it,” she says.

There is a perfectionist in her, absolutely, but she has learned that chasing a theoretical perfect version of a lyric can eventually start pulling you further away from what made it work.

“Every song, just make sure it’s to 90%, because it’ll never get to 100%,” she says. “It could always be better, better, better, better. And you always think, ‘Oh, I could have changed that,’ but you gotta let it go at some point.”

For a project about releasing some control, that feels fitting.

The Extra Ten Percent

If the writing gives Whatever This Is its personality, the production is what makes you keep finding things in it.

There are synths tucked into practically every corner of the EP, even on its softer tracks. Dani points to sounds from instruments like the Juno and Omnisphere as part of what holds the record together, but she actually credits the vocals and writing even more.

“The vocal style and vocal production and the cheekiness of the lyrics can be seen in all the songs,” she says.

She experimented more with her voice here than on her earlier releases.

Harmonies stack on top of each other. Background vocals drift in and out. There are ad-libs you might not fully register until the third or fourth listen, and little melodic ideas sitting underneath the lead that make the songs feel unusually alive.

Dani says that kind of vocal experimentation used to intimidate her.

Now, some of those moments are her favorite parts of the record.

“There’s just little ear candy in all of them,” she says. “And little ad-libs as well.”

She credits her producers with helping push her there and, maybe more importantly, helping her trust herself enough to leave those moments in.

That attention to detail is a huge part of why Whatever This Is works.

“Sexy” even contains tiny room sounds and imperfections that the perfectionist in Dani initially wanted to fix. Eventually, she realized they belonged.

“I love how it shows all those little pieces because it kind of goes in sync with what the song is saying,” she explains. “I don’t see myself as perfect or sexy, and the song also isn’t perfect.”

It is a small observation, but it says a lot about the artist making this record.

Dani is getting better at knowing when the thing that feels slightly imperfect is actually the thing giving a song its pulse.

Oversharing Looks Good on Her

There is another reason these songs connect: Dani is not particularly interested in pretending she has everything figured out.

Actually, she would rather tell you too much.

“I’m such an oversharer,” she says. “As soon as it’s said out loud, I feel like it’s less scary.”

That instinct sits at the center of Whatever This Is. Dani writes about the feelings that can seem embarrassingly disproportionate while you are having them: getting attached too quickly, romanticizing someone, overthinking, being uncertain about where something is going, and occasionally realizing you built a pedestal for someone who did very little to deserve it.

“If it takes oversharing to make people feel comfortable, that’s what I’m gonna do 100% of the time,” she says.

Listeners have already started giving that honesty back to her.

After releasing a trailer around the EP, Dani began getting messages from people asking some variation of the same question: did you read my mind?

That reaction means something to her, especially after keeping her music to herself for so long before eventually starting to release it.

Hearing people respond to the songs has become one of her favorite parts of the entire process.

She hopes the record gives people permission to recognize themselves in all of it.

“It’s not embarrassing to not be in a relationship. It’s not embarrassing to feel really deep feelings for someone after knowing them for like two weeks,” she says. “I think I’m a very delusional, also obsessive kind of person, and I think that’s okay. I think we don’t need to hide that part of ourselves.”

She wants listeners to find some peace in it.

She also wants them to have fun.

Thankfully, Whatever This Is makes that part very easy.

A Very Good Place to Be

Dani calls “Magnetic” her current favorite. “Pretty Thing,” made with one of her best friends from college, was the most fun to create. And when the songs eventually make their way onto a stage, she is especially excited about “Again” and “Bug Eyes.”

The reason is simple: people already seem to know those ones.

“I feel like it’d be so cool to perform and have some people singing the lyrics back,” she says.

It is easy to imagine.

Because for all the tiny production choices and deeply specific lyrics packed into Whatever This Is, nothing about the record feels difficult to enter. Dani has made something clever without making it cold, vulnerable without making it heavy, and polished without sanding away the details that make it feel human.

The more time you spend with it, the more there is to love.

That is what makes Dani such an exciting artist to find right now. She clearly cares about every layer, but the finished songs never feel like they are trying too hard to prove how much work went into them. They just feel good.

And with seven tracks this magnetic, Whatever This Is feels less like Dani figuring out who she is and more like the moment everyone else gets to catch up.

Dani Stocksdale’sWhatever This Is is out now.

Photography: Ron Dadon & Paola Altamirano.