Casual listeners of local shoegazer Dottie might be surprised by the fuzz-filled project’s upcoming Free Week live set. Any act capable of producing such formidable waves of sound must count at least four members – odds are, too, that there’ll be at least one man onstage.
“They’re gonna get catfished pretty hard,” laughs Haley Davidson, the DIY-minded brains behind the solo shoegaze project. With an onstage setup of one guitar and a smattering of trusty effect pedals, she supports Ringo Deathstarr and Fawn at Mohawk’s no-charge outdoor show on Saturday.
Ten years ago, the North Dakota native relocated to Austin and dove headfirst into its burgeoning shoegaze scene. Inspired by genre greats (“Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive are my Holy Trinity”), plus a lineup of local mainstays like She Sir, Soda Lilies, and Free Week bill-sharers Ringo Deathstarr, she began releasing hauntingly ambient, lyrically sparse demos via SoundCloud. The songwriter made her entry into the city’s live music scene as a member of the Sophies, a Craigslist-formed alt-rock fourpiece.
“We played for a few years, and then I was like, ‘I need to do more, I want to release more and make more,” she explains. “That’s when I really started doing Dottie – once I felt comfortable playing by myself after a few shows under my belt with the Sophies.”
“I’ve been playing shows around town ever since, and everything is self-produced, recorded, and released,” she says. “It’s a one-woman show over here.”
Her most recent EP, midheaven, serves as a swirling and spectral dream-pop delight, drawing equally from the spaced-out chords of ambient great Brian Eno as her distortion-heavy shoegaze heroes. From its heaven-reaching titular track to celestial slow-burner “disappearing,” themes of heartbreak and grief dance alongside a palpable ache for transcendence.
The late 2024 release marks the end of the decade-old project’s most commercially successful year to date: features on tastemaking platforms like NTS Radio helped boost the songwriter from 1,000 to 70,000 monthly Spotify listeners, opening the door for her first shows outside of Texas. Davidson also describes the drop as her most personal to date.
“Each of my releases kind of sums up who I am and how I feel at that point in my life,” she explains. “This past year has come with a lot of change, but I also feel more like myself than ever – this feels like the most ‘me’ music I’ve made.”
Her recent success, however, has not come without hardship. In the fall of 2021, Davidson received a cancer diagnosis, prompting a hiatus from live performance but a deepened focus on writing and recording. She received her final chemotherapy treatment in 2023.
“I’m good now, but that was the craziest thing ever. Writing music through that was probably a necessary way to process and get through it.”
“I think that’s what a lot of people like about shoegaze – you can express feelings with just that wave of sound,” she continues. “I feel like it even affects your blood pressure, you know – it changes you.”
Dottie, Ringo Deathstarr, Fawn
Saturday 4, Mohawk
redriverculturaldistrict.org/free-week
This article appears in January 3 • 2025.