daine released their debut album In Endless Awe & Agony on Friday 6th November, and it is the fully realised artistic statement we’ve been anticipating from them. It is a move past their early e-girl typical uploads during the pandemic, certainly a wave of the time. Instead, this album stands as the product of true personal and creative evolution. “I’ve spent the last couple of years really working on myself to figure out how to be as authentic as possible. Whatever that means,” daine recently noted in an interview with SSQUARED Magazine. That sincerity is evident through the record as a whole.
Momentum has built steadily throughout the year for daine, driven by a vibrant, thriving community of peers they have collaborated with and opened for, the likes of Ninajirachi, Bassvictim, Underscores, and more. Their Triple J Like A Version cover of Martin Solveig and Dragonette’s Hello also caught immediate internet attention, and has been racking up a high stream count.
What makes In Endless Awe & Agony feel complete and compelling is the deliverance of this self-dubbed ‘tweemo-tronica’; it weaves together elements of tweemo, electropop, modern witch house, and indie sleaze. The tweemo charm of whimsical, childlike glockenspiel and key flourishes, and jangly pop melodies serve as a brilliant, sugary contrast to the record’s darker currents—confrontational themes like the disillusionment of youth, and critique of industry and the government. It is bubblegum-pop with a razorblade inside.
Silly Little Animal / Go! and White Collar discuss alienation and shallow illusions of validation, then leading into Product Of Profit (P.O.P), which critiques late-stage capitalism and how the industry can have a tendency to chew up independent (especially female and transgender) artists and spit them out as commodities. Their melancholy songwriting shines through on songs like God Figure and Wishing Well and God Figure, grounding parts of the album with slow-burning textures. Tracks like the resonant Love Love (Love Love) and the effervescent PQC hit with the fizz of late-2000s Sleigh Bells or MGMT. The former is a window into a deeply felt neurodivergent ex-friendship, and the latter is about people who “give too much of themselves away but still choose to love fiercely.”
Next, (I Want You In) Dakota is more of an indie-pop slice. White Collar, I Used to Kill, and Supervillain all lean into the modern witch-house style with their nocturnal electronic textures. The album closer Spider-man vulnerably explores their contradictory feelings about an abusive past relationship, how a victim can simultaneously despise someone for causing deep harm while tender or conflicted feelings still remain.
At its core, In Endless Awe & Agony doesn’t just fall into the easy trap of mindless indie-sleaze nostalgia of dance music for people who don’t care. Rather, they have crafted a sickly-sweet yet confrontational portrait of youth, celebrity, and emotional introspection, ingraining daine into the fabric of this thriving modern alternative scene.
For fans of: Crystal Castles, yeule, Bassvictim
‘In Endless Awe & Agony’ by daine is out now.
Words by Gracie MJ
