Following the release of her 2021 LP Any Shape You Take, Indigo De Souza found herself living alone, reevaluating her place, her purpose, and the people around her. “It’s such a shitty thing, being human in a super violent, littered world,” she tells Apple Music. “You really have to decide to focus on the light and pull the goodness out of this experience, or else it's just going to rip you to shreds.” What came next was a sense of clarity that naturally made its way into her songwriting. All of This Will End is, in her words, “the clearest I've ever been”—a confident third album that feels free and true, miles away from the grungy anguish of its predecessor. “Each song is right to the point, exactly,” she says. “I just realized what my life was all about. Even though it was kind of a lonely time, it was also a triumphant time. I went into my chrysalis and became something completely new.” Here, the North Carolina singer-songwriter takes us inside some of the album’s songs. “Time Back” “I like how it has the three different sections: It kind of has a really ear-candy pop moment, and then it has a really triumphant moment, and then it dips down into kind of like defeatedness—like a tiredness—and then it pops into a really dark space that's kind of all watery. I kind of love the way that it doesn't settle into any of them for too long and it's like you feel like you want it to keep going on for longer. That song sets the tone because it just reminds me of the mimicking of a human brain going quickly between different feelings and our kind of not really having control over it.” “You Can Be Mean” “It's kind of hard for a lot of people, I've noticed, to settle into actually choosing a romantic partner that treats you well, and there's a period of time where we're just kind of trying it out with different people and learning what feels good, and feels bad, and hurts us, and lifts us up. This song is about the last guy that I ever let completely just shit on me. He just was the worst guy of all time, and he was literally a demon, and I knew that while I was with him, but I still had some idea that maybe he wouldn't be a demon if I gave him love and affection and kind of tried to pull him out of whatever made him that way. I realized that there was nothing I could do for him, and that I needed to choose people that would actually treat me well. And so it feels like kind of a revenge track.” “Losing” “I remember writing it in the house I was living in. A lot of it is about things changing and just realizing that there's nothing I can do—especially having to do with friends that you grow out of, and that you kind of develop space between. It’s just a natural occurrence, and it's sometimes not something that you really need to fight, but that you just kind of have to accept. This was just during that time of change, when I was in my house and just feeling the weight of all that.” “Parking Lot” “I've had a lot of moments where I've just been sitting in my car feeling devastated, because I just went to the grocery store or I'm about to go to the grocery store. The grocery store could be a hard place for me to be. It's just a lot of stimulation—a lot of beeping and different energies from people, especially if it's super busy. On the outside, I probably look totally normal, because I know how to look like I'm a totally normal person, just going about some mundane stuff. But I think it was about a time in my life where I was having a hard time navigating corporate spaces, and also having a hard time navigating having to go to a job and show up and be consistent, because I was having a lot of mental health issues. Some days it would feel like it was impossible for me to get out of bed.” “All of This Will End” “It's almost like a wrapped bundle of my daily mantra to myself—I just have an awareness of the fleetingness of every day. I could die any day, and so I kind of treat every day with as much intention as I possibly can. And this song was about coming to that place, in my mind, and what it was to kind of shift from this space of jadedness into a space of caring, coming from a lot of anxiety into fearlessness. I always remember the songs that just kind of write themselves—and this song was one of those. It all just felt like it made so much sense, like it had already been in existence.” “Smog” “A lot of stuff that I write sometimes comes out of a perspective that's not actually mine, but it's making fun of a certain perspective—like I just sit down, and shut up, and hope they don't notice me. It's like it's not actually something that I do, but it's calling attention to the kind of pain in the world and how a lot of people end up feeling that way. This song just felt kind of like a release. I remember feeling kind of fed up with the world and tired of everyone mowing their little square lawns and just worrying about things that don't actually feel important in the long run.” “Younger & Dumber” “If someone asks me about my life and what has it been up until this point, I would basically say, ‘I went through a lot of hard things,’ and I would talk about how those things brought me to where I am now. And then at the end, I would say that I'm grateful that it all happened the way it did, even though it was painful and hard and I had a really tough time actually making it all the way to where I am now, because I wouldn't be who I am now—finding a good community, and love, and purpose—if it hadn't happened that way, and I think that that's what the song is about. It feels like such a good statement for this album, because this album feels like the beginning of me making albums from a grounded and stable place.”
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