Tap into Transcendent Tunes
Looking to add whimsy to your life? Meet Kate De Rosset Davis, a local artist who just released her fifth album titled, “It Will Burn.” The layered harmonies and soft vocals give it an ethereal dream pop sound. “I feel a lot of yearning when I’m writing music,” she says, “Sometimes it’s pain, sometimes it’s hopeful.” Her process typically begins at the piano before transitioning to the electric keyboard. Once she finds her flow, a song can come together in a day or two but then she spends a long time fine tuning the details. “It becomes like a puzzle,” says Kate, “I get so excited, I lose sleep because I just want to finish it.”
Although this is her 10th year seriously pursuing music, this is her first time working with a label. The label is an artist run collective based out of Germany.
Kate is from Southern Pines but lived in places like Portland and Austin, where she went to school for music business, interned for labels and experimented with her own music. She moved back to Southern Pines at the end of 2023 and began reconnecting with the playful side of the creative process and decided she wanted to produce the album herself at her home studio. “This album is the most proud I’ve been of anything I’ve ever made,” says Kate. Being close to family again, she says, gave her the comfort to have fun with creation and production. Readapting after living in cities for years has allowed Kate to slow down. “I feel sense of calm here that I really wanted to feel some of those other places but it was hard to feel it.”
The album’s name was a product of playing with her name in Google translate. “I thought, ‘It Will Burn’ sounded sort of mysterious,” she says. Kate wants her sound to have transportive, calming qualities. “I think a lot of times with my music I’m creating a world I want to live in.”
The new album has eight songs and explores feelings of growing into new versions of yourself. To us, it sounds how we imagine floating through a lava lamp feels.
“‘It will burn’ is sort of what your healing journey will feel like at times,” says Kate. “There is always going to be a crumbling and a burning, maybe, of who you thought you were in order to become who you are. I like that constant of burning – like a Phoenix.”
“With art, every time you listen you’re going to hear it differently,” says Kate, which is one of her favorite things about creating. Although her music is tricky to perform live, she is interested in eventually finding a way to bring versions of some of the songs to live settings. Find her music on all major streaming platforms under Kate De Rosset.
