Who Is Dakota Dry? Meet the rising artist behind The Edge Of Our Never Ending Universe

Dakota Dry’s debut album, The Edge Of Our Never Ending Universe, arrives as a sweeping, emotionally charged portrait of early adulthood – one shaped by cycles of love, loss, revelation, and renewal. Produced by Grammy-winner Eva Reistad, the Richmond, California-born songwriter draws on the poetic folk of Joni Mitchell and the soulful power of Aretha Franklin, blending intimate storytelling with cinematic arrangements that mirror the intensity of the moments that inspired them.

Dry describes the album as its own “universe,” tracing a journey from the hopeful spark of New Moon to the reflective closing track How To Begin Again. She speaks candidly to Headliner about her biggest revelation while making the record, the song she found hardest to write, and the healing she found in writing this collection of songs.

Who is the first artist you can remember having an impact on you?

From a young age, I was enamoured by Joni Mitchell’s voice and storytelling, particularly on her album Blue. I remember singing along to her songs on long drives with my family and being especially moved by River. 

Throughout my life, different songs of hers resonated with me at different times, and I felt that I was discovering life alongside her music. Now I listen to Hejira way more than I do Blue. I hadn’t understood Hejira as a child, and now I have the lyrics of the song hanging on my wall. Her music will always be deeply ingrained in me in a way no other music is.

Which artists have influenced your songwriting and vocal style?

People like Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, and Ray LaMontagne definitely were my main songwriting influences. The biggest lesson I learned from them was how the most personal and specific moments of storytelling somehow carry the most universal human emotions. The more intimate and detailed they were, the more relatable it actually was and the more emotionally captivating.

My singing style had very different influences, however, with my favourite singers as a kid being Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, and everyone in the cast of the 2007 Hairspray movie! I specifically remember singing along to Aretha’s Chain Chain Chain and Do Right Woman and trying to imitate her attitude and power. I was always told I was a “little girl with a big voice”, and I loved that!

Are you into any music that is totally different to the music you make?

I love this question because YES! Erykah Badu is a great example of an artist whom I absolutely love and listen to constantly, but don’t make music similar to. I love anything soulful and funky, even though that's not the main genre I write in. 

As someone who has performed a lot of music that is not my own and been in many types of ensembles, from Gospel Choir to A Cappella groups to my own Klezmer ensemble, I have got to sing so much music and have found a deep love for them all, even though my own songwriting isn’t based in those traditions. I also love listening to musical theatre, which is where I got my start performing at age seven. It’s not a genre of music I write in, but something I love to perform. 

Having studied Ethnomusicology in college, my favourite types of music have a large range from Balkan vocal ensembles to Mariachi. Although it is all very different from what I write, I think it all seeps in in small ways, I am probably not even aware of.

Your debut album, The Edge of Our Never Ending Universe, sounds both intimate and cinematic. What does the title mean to you personally?

I wanted this album to be a universe within itself that listeners can enter. The title track is about being completely enveloped in a relationship with someone to the point that you can't see outside of it, and it is like living in a completely separate “universe” that just the two of you create. 

I wanted to capture the beauty and pain of that kind of love and play with the paradox of something feeling completely infinite and yet, in reality, having an end.

How would you describe the emotional journey this album takes listeners on?

I would describe it as a cycle. The Edge of Our Never Ending Universe is a tender exploration of every part of the emotional pendulum. It is full of inward reflection and outward release. Beginning with the intimate title track, it sets the scene of a beautiful but painful love. 

It is an honest telling of a love story that exposes untethered hope and joy (at the beginning of the album) and deep discouragement, anger, and fear (through the songs at the centre of the album). These songs in the middle of the album are aching and cathartic. 

However, the last three tracks take listeners slowly back into the light present at the beginning of the album with a feeling of yearning, reassurance, and new beginnings.

You’ve said the record reflects the relationships and revelations of your early adult life; what was the biggest revelation you had while making it?

My biggest recurring revelation was the way in which life, love, and creativity move in cycles. I learned to trust those cycles during the time making this project. To trust that moments of confusion would eventually lead to clarity, which would eventually lead back to confusion, and on and on. I learned that this would apply to joy and pain, connection and distance, and excitement and disappointment. 

These cycles not only existed in my personal life, but also in my professional and creative life, and I was taught this lesson over and over in different ways. I think that's a big part of moving from adolescent to adult: realising that the feelings you have won't last forever, that everything ebbs and flows.

What was it like working with Grammy-winning engineer Eva Reistad on your first full-length project?

Working with Eva was an absolute blast! I knew I wanted to build a world in this album, and there was no better person than someone whose career is in movie soundtracks! But above all, her care and dedication to my art, going above and beyond what I could have ever asked for, is something I will forever be grateful for. 

She has become so much more than just a mixing engineer throughout this process and is now a wonderful friend, advocate, and mentor. Being able to work with a team of so many women engineers, like Eva and Jett Galindo and Laura Agudelo Cuartas, who made me feel heard and respected, was such a gift.

How did you approach creating a sound that balances sweeping arrangements with deeply personal storytelling?

Although when I first wrote all of these songs, they started as intimate explorations through poems in my notes app or times alone spent at the piano in my room, the feelings that they held were big and all-consuming. I wanted to capture that in the arrangements and wanted a lushness and drama that matched my internal world at that time. 

In creating this entire project, I always came back to the moment I created the song and rooted every choice in a dedication to honouring and capturing that initial feeling.

You’ve cited Joni Mitchell, Phoebe Bridgers, Mitski, and Adrianne Lenker as inspirations. What qualities in their music speak to you most?

The main aspect of all of their music that draws me to their work is the way that they prioritise the expression of a feeling over everything and have deep artistic integrity. All of their music provides such intense catharsis for so many, and their musical choices clearly come from a desire to express rather than impress. 

Listening to Adrianne Lenker’s voice, lyricism, chord choices, and melodies makes me, and so many of her fans, so deeply emotional. She could sing one word over and over or tell a detailed story, and either way, it moves people because of the honesty it comes from. These artists are my reminders of the importance of honest music.

Were there specific albums or songs by those artists that guided your creative direction during the writing process?

My influences during the writing process were mostly subconscious since the music I write usually comes out in one moment of overwhelming desire to understand and release a feeling. However, in recording, arranging, and producing, I took a lot of outside inspiration. 

I knew from the beginning, for instance, that I wanted Why Can’t You Free Me to emulate Phoebe Bridgers’ I Know The End. Cunningham Birds’ Crystal was great guidance for the type of tenderness and beauty I wanted for The Edge of Our Never Ending Universe, and I generally took a lot of inspiration from Weyes Blood’s And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow for the lushness I wanted in the strings.

Your music draws from both folk and soul traditions of the ’60s and ’70s; how do those influences show up in The Edge of Our Never Ending Universe?

The political landscape of the US during this time created a shift to more honest music that was less concerned with being palatable and more concerned with making a statement and releasing emotional burdens. The lyric-focused music of the Laurel Canyon scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s has a big influence on the way I approach writing. 

The songs on this album emphasised storytelling and emotional expression, inspired by this period. I also approached singing these songs from a place of feeling rather than perfection, and was inspired vocally by the raw and soulful quality that singers of this time employed.

New Moon is described as a celebratory love song; what inspired that track, and what does it represent within the album’s story arc?

I wrote this song at the very beginning of a relationship. It was June 1st, which was just 11 days after a long building crush had finally asked me out on the night of the New Moon in May. I was coming out of a period of a lot of self-pity and wallowing, and I was surrendering to the idea of something new and exciting. I was realising that a lot of my worries were smaller than I had been feeling and that things pass. 

I had also just had a really exciting show that was a big step into the next phase of my music career. I wanted to capture the joy and hope that was bubbling inside me in this song. It's one of my only “happy songs”. This song is the spark of hope that new love brings. 

With so many celestial metaphors present in the album, I wanted to compare cycles of love to cycles of the moon. New Moon is the beginning of that cycle. The release of this album on November 20 2025, was also on the New Moon!

The album closes with How To Begin Again, a song about the end of a relationship. Why did you choose to end your debut with that reflection?

Although the song is about the end of a relationship, it is also about the beginning of a new era. I wrote this song after my very first breakup, and I had no idea how I would move forward. Little did I know, I would end up healing, creating a new life and community, then falling in love again, and then out of love again, and so on. 

This song taught me about that transitional period of time between eras. The song sounds different from the rest of the album in many ways, and I love that there is a feeling of newness and excitement musically in a song that lyrically mourns the ending of something. This album is a time capsule to an era of my life, and closing with a song that feels like the end of something old but opens the door to what comes next was very intentional for both personal and musical reasons.

Which song on the record was the hardest to write, and which one felt the most healing?

Hopelessly took a long time to write, so in many ways that song was the hardest. I had the chords for a while, and I couldn't figure out what the lyrics would be. Everything I tried didn't feel quite right. At the time, I was in love with my best friend and hadn't admitted it to myself yet. 

Coming to terms with that feeling was necessary for me to write the lyrics, and writing those lyrics was necessary for me to come to terms with that feeling. As soon as I confronted that truth, the lyrics flowed. It was a very important moment in my life.

Craving Collapse was definitely the most healing to write. It was based on a dream I had where I discovered a child version of myself crying on the floor of my room. I tried to go up to her to comfort her, but felt distant and unsure of how. I was coming to terms with being responsible for my own pain now as an adult and grappling with my desire to be saved by someone else.

Ultimately, I knew I would be the one to have to heal those young and hurting parts of myself, but I didn’t know how. That admittance of feeling like a stranger to my young self was, ironically, an important step in becoming closer to her. I was able to lay to rest my sense of victimhood through that song.

Your mission is to make music that helps people feel understood in times of isolation. Was there a moment in your own life when someone else’s song did that for you?

The album Halfway Home by Angel Olsen was a refuge for me when I was rebuilding myself after a break-up and a period of disconnection from my own centre. The first song, Acrobat, has a line where she sings, “I am alive/ I am alive/ I thought/ I thought that I’d died” in the most beautiful vibrato. 

I listened to that song over and over just to hear that line sung with the weary and tender hopefulness that resonated with me so deeply in the moment. This is just one example of many.

How do you balance vulnerability and strength in your songwriting?

I think my own personal strength comes from my vulnerability. My ability to create something that feels so true to the most intimate parts of me allows me to stand strongly in myself and what I feel, and I think that creates room for both sides in my music.

Away from music, what do you like to do?

I love going to the library. Libraries are one of the last spaces where one can exist without the pressure of purchasing anything. I love the quiet peacefulness of a library, getting to slow down a bit, and all the types of people you meet.

What was the last thing you watched on a plane?

I watched Grease for the first time in a long time alongside a friend, and it was so fun and nostalgic. It was also shocking to realise how non-PG it is for it to have been a favourite for so many kids!