Indigo De Souza is working on a painting. After taking some psychedelics, she turned to canvas, unspooling her perspective of the natural world in color. The painting is big and abstract and energetic, much like her music — her creativity bleeds into assorted forms, and in its fluidity, De Souza yields to no one.
The 25-year-old, North Carolina-based musician is agile, wedging honest confessions between raging guitar licks and rapid-fire drums. A resilient embrace of change sculpted her first two acclaimed albums, I Love My Mom (2018) and Any Shape You Take (2021), but this acceptance takes center stage on the recently released All Of This Will End. Listening to it feels like standing in the eye of a hurricane, but instead of trying to vanquish the disorder, De Souza masters the restlessness.
It's no wonder she's a rising star in the grunge and indie rock scene, playing major festivals and touring with everyone from Lucy Dacus to Alex G. While her music — and consequent ascent to fame — has occasionally been turbulent, she's found ways to ground herself spiritually. Most importantly, she cited close community as a key source of meaning in her life.
"[Community] has led me to this point of not only being vulnerable with my songs, but also wanting to create a safe space for everybody that is listening, because I know how special that feels," De Souza tells GRAMMY.com. "I know how much everybody needs that to feel like they are belonging and they are worth being here."
In realizing her self-worth and dedicating herself to fostering safe spaces, De Souza is more free than she's ever been. Part of this aspiration for liberty comes from her artist mother, who painted all of De Souza's album covers. Each depicts an evocative scene of skeletons — wallowing, embracing, searching for connection — amid lush greenery. They're stirring, exquisite images that encapsulate mortality, another key theme of De Souza's angsty music.
On the aptly titled All Of This Will End, De Souza comes to terms with her mortality and holds it with strength. A rich, red horizon floods the album cover; though the sun is going down, the musician lingers in the light while she can.
Ahead of her record's release, Indigo De Souza spoke with GRAMMY.com about embracing life's temporality, how close-knit communities fuel her creativity, and why her latest album is her truest representation of herself yet.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What did you discover about yourself while working on All of This Will End?
I feel like more than the other albums, I trusted my own voice more. I feel like the process was faster than the other two albums because there was a lot of just going with my gut and not second guessing stuff as much.
That was probably the biggest thing I learned because coming from the last album, I kind of decided this time that I wanted to fully self-produce it. But I wanted help from Alex [Farrar] who worked on the last album as well, and he just became a really special collaborator throughout the last album. And then I really wanted to pull him into this one. And it was such a sweet pairing of energies to kind of lead the [album].
Also, one of my best friends, my soulmate, Dexter Webb plays all of the crazy shreddy guitar stuff on the album. He also plays the sweet piano in "Younger & Dumber," and he is just very, very talented in so many ways. And he did a lot of the production as well.
But yeah, I think I just learned to trust myself and trust my inner community to make the thing that felt the most true, and I kind of feel like that same thing happened with my music videos this time around.
On "Younger & Dumber," you sing that "you're tired of feeling the space all around you," and I really connected to that. Elaborate on that feeling.
I've had that feeling ever since I was young. I think I'm just a kind of deeply depressed person, but it's also a very deep existential doom. And I have anxiety as well, and I just have a lot of issues.
I'm fine day to day by myself. I used to not be able to function as well, and I was not able to make money because of it, because I was just kind of in bed all the time. But now I feel very functional and able to do a lot of things — have community, really show up in my life, and make it mean something.
I think that that feeling is just that sometimes I get tired of fighting. Sometimes I get tired of creating meaning and intention and doing things to help my life succeed or doing things to feed myself or feed my creativity.
All Of This Will End hones in on mortality, and I think there's something really peaceful in accepting that everything is temporary. How does making music give you purpose, within that context of mortality?
The acceptance of mortality allows me to make music that is directly from the heart, and is completely true and is very vulnerable and raw. I don't feel precious about keeping that to myself. I don't feel scared of being open about my feelings because they're fleeting, and I know that at the end of it all, I'm going to die.
So I feel like it's important to show up in my truest form and actually connect with people in a real way. It allows me to pour a lot of meaning into my live shows as well, because I really love sharing the songs and being able to share actual space with [the audience]. And it really is such a magical feeling when you pour your heart out on stage, and then feel everyone in the room kind of energetically shift into a space of vulnerability as well.
You talked about how accepting mortality helps you make the most out of life. What are some of the little things in life that you've found meaning in?
I like being around a fire with my friends. And that's one of my favorite things — being in nature and making a fire and sitting around it and talking. I really like going out into the forest with my dog and just watching him play in the forest and in the creek because he's just a total creature. It's his favorite place, and he needs to go there every day to feel good. And I love just having a hot drink with my best friend and roommate in the morning.
What's your relationship with nature, and how has it affected your creative process?
So much of my pain and grief about the world comes from humans' unhealthy relationship to nature or disconnected relationship to nature. A lot of things that humans build and create is actively ruining nature and choking nature. And a lot of people don't even have a connection to nature anymore because of how technological everything has become or how separate everything has become… It brings out a lot for me emotionally, which then pours into my music.
I think that's why I wrote about parking lots a lot in this album. Ever since I was young and I heard that song about paving the parking lot, I remember it made me think about the fact that parking lots were paved. And then at some point I started realizing, oh, it wasn't always this way.
We built all this stuff and we paved over actual forests, and there's all this magic around us that we don't know how to tap into. And that's really strange. Now I know there are people who do know how to tap into that magic, but they're more rare. I think I'm surrounded by people like that in my life now, which is really important.
You're definitely tapping into that magic. Following your parking lot paving realization, how did you confront change when you were younger? And how does that compare to how you cope with it now?
There's different kinds of change. There's change that is out of your control and you're just watching it happen. And then there's change that you can take control of in your own life. I'm going to move here. I'm going to make a boundary with this person. I'm going to cut my hair off.
I think when I was young, I felt like a lot of my change was out of my control because I was small and I was under the roof of my mom. I remember feeling really stuck at school, like really sad that I just had to be in a room in a fluorescent square box every day. I've read journals from when I was young and there's some really emo s— in there.
When you're touring, you have to perform really personal songs over and over. Is it ever difficult to revisit those songs frequently, or does it just feel more therapeutic to perform them often?
It feels really therapeutic, especially now since we're playing this new album. The last album got really old for me and started to actually be painful to revisit, but now I have a couple new bandmates and we've kind of reworked some of those songs to keep playing them live. Honestly having a fresh new perspective of them and having taken a long break from them gives me a second wind.
What does community look like and feel like to you, whether that's on tour or just at home?
I think all that community means to me is having safe space between people for expression and true communication — whether something hurts someone's feelings or is just a need that needs to be communicated.
I really feel like one of the main beauties of true community is being able to face conflict in a way that actually triggers growth between people and is actually a space to find deeper meaning and understanding instead of separation… In that same breath, I also feel that way just about dark, sad feelings. It's better to talk about that instead of holding it inside.
Your openness and love of community translates to your latest album, to the point where it feels like you're building a safe space for listeners. How did you gradually learn to be comfortable with being so vulnerable? Or do you still find yourself adjusting sometimes?
There was a time when I had friends around me who I was vulnerable with, and they actually really hurt me in response. That felt like a moment that really stunted my growth… and that was right after I put out Any Shape You Take. And it was during the pandemic, and I was alone for a while.
Then I started to meet these new friends that were kind of farther out from the city, in the sticks, and I started hanging out with them in nature. And then the community just got bigger and bigger. I think what taught me to be very strong in my vulnerability is that I opened up to them and they did not turn me away. They, in turn, opened up to me and we began learning about each other, and it created these really close bonds that actually gave deep, deep meaning to my life and helped me feel like I had a place in the world.
I wanted to talk about your mom, who's a major inspiration to you. What have you learned from her? Which of her traits have inspired you the most?
I think that the trait that has inspired me the most about her is that she does not care about what people think of her. She's always been very loud with her artwork, and she will just go to an event wearing a crazy costume with a mask. When I was young, I was really embarrassed by her. And then as I got older, I realized how special it was that she didn't care about what people thought.
I was always so confused about why we weren't leaving the town because the town was so unaccepting, but she was dedicated to being someone who was bringing new life to the town and who was making it feel like a space where other artsy people could come. And she just really loved that place and didn't want to abandon it.
I think that's kind of how I feel now too. In this area where I live, there are a lot of problematic things going on. It's the South, so there's people who mean harm to minorities and don't accept the queerness, but I don't want to abandon this place because I really love the nature and I love the people. I love the people who are fighting for this space to be a safe space. I think she taught me that too: to not abandon the things that you love.
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