Dorio’s third album marks a new era of instrumental collaboration, and creative cohesion, for the pop project. The brainchild of Chad Doriocourt debuted in 2020 with the guitar-driven Yesterday the Sky Was Blue, laced with harmonies from Doriocourt’s partner – and former Chronicle Music Editor – Rachel Rascoe, who hopped aboard as co-writer and core collaborator for 2023’s hazy Strawberry Dream.
For this month’s Super Love 3, the duo welcomed drummer CJ Eliasen, keyboardist David Alvarez, flutist Paulo Santos, and trumpeter Kenken Gorder into their home studio (“We call it living room pop instead of bedroom pop,” Doriocourt quips). The result is a buoyant collection of complexly layered songs ripe for summer’s picking – ready to be taken swimming, dancing, and road tripping.
Starting the record feels like powering up your DS with a new game cartridge. The dial-up tones of the opening track, “Welcome to Super Love 3,” conjure an image of graphic saturation, delivered in cartoon pixels. Short, interstitial tracks like this one punctuate the album and draw on its world-within-itself feeling. Select “play now” to be transported via digital sprinkles into Super Love 3’s landscape of sun-warmed melodies and fluttering electronic trills.
Dancing between analog and futuristic sounds, Super Love 3 feels like grownup indie pop that knows how to have a well-dressed breakdown and laugh about it afterward.
The first full-length song on the album, “Plastic Heart,” is a boldly colored introduction to its sonic universe and lyrical themes. The wistful lines meander through a cyclical routine of missing someone who is “not too far away” with plaintive melancholy, while the drum machine-inspired percussion remains tenaciously upbeat, surrounded by dreamy vocal sighs and magnetic guitar riffs.
Much of the album pairs the quotidian pitfalls of long-term love and the dogged anxieties of late-20s life with playful sonic nostalgia and saccharine earworms, leaving listeners to assume that it all must be all right. As deeply personal as its sharply written moments feel, there’s something for everyone to relate to in the overthought, often-resolved feelings Dorio presents.
On “Air,” a relatable cry for space in the face of emotional overwhelm becomes the kind of chorus crescendo you’d twirl your partner to. “Shadow on your eye/ You can barely cry/ Don’t give up this time … Air is what I need,” Doriocourt and Rascoe sing together, as the refrain winds to a release. The sparse, internally observational language reveals an intensely private world that evokes a feeling of intrusion, alongside affinity.
“Stereo World” layers jazzy flute melodies with record scratches while toying with the comforts of being known and the temptation of reinvention. It takes on a twilight-toned atmosphere that bleeds into the final interlude of the album, fittingly titled “A Farewell.”
Like a balloon escaping into the galaxy, cinematic keys and trumpet soar between interrupted satellite bleeps and distant audio clips as “A Farewell” fades out. Before the world of Super Love 3 can evaporate into the night, listeners are pulled back into “Everyday Feels Like Tomorrow,” a daydream anthem that summarizes the project’s themes. “I need to lock you with a key/ It’s a chemical release/ Tried pop psychology/ It didn’t change my mind,” Rascoe repeats, summarizing a mindloop of disillusionment and foregone resolutions as an arcade game riff and pensive vocal harmonies build on a looping guitar melody.
Dancing between analog and futuristic sounds, Super Love 3 feels like grownup indie pop that knows how to have a well-dressed breakdown and laugh about it afterward. Dorio’s pop-fusion draws on sounds that span eras and infuses each note with their distinct sensibilities, landing in a world all its own.
Dorio
Super Love 3 (Earth Libraries)
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This article appears in June 27 • 2025.
