Doe paoro - living through collapse - queen of wands

Today, Doe Paoro (266k monthly Spotify listeners), a singer, songwriter, and sound healer, releases her highly anticipated new album, Living Through Collapse, her first LP in seven years. The body of work is Doe Paoro’s most unbridled and expansive output to date and is aimed at catalyzing collective healing, an undertaking informed by her long-time apprenticeship under Shipibo teachers of shamanic plant medicine in the Peruvian Amazon, as well as her work in leading sound baths and guided meditations. The result serves as both sanctuary and sustenance, providing the clarity of mind and radiance of spirit needed to navigate an increasingly precarious world.

Alongside the release, Doe Paoro shares ‘Teach Us of Endings’, a sublimely joyful single and cinematic video, channeling a buoyant energy by way of its bouncing percussion and

effervescent textures (sculpted in part through the use of an Andean flute known as the quenacho). Coproduced by Lagartijeando and Devin Gati with lyrics co-written by author/activist Alnoor Ladha, ‘Teach Us of Endings’ gazes outward and inward for a panoramic meditation on cycles of life, looking both to our elders and our own inner guidance on how to navigate the ongoing polycrisis. It’s a poetic call to collective awakening: “In the face of crisis, there’s a calling for us all,” she sings, a message both urgent and devotional.

The accompanying music video was directed by AnAkA (FKA twigs, Willow Smith) and filmed in Costa Rica, which Paoro calls home. On the collaboration, Paoro says, “When seeking a collaborator for this record, I was looking for someone who understood the urgent role music has to play in both revolution and grief-tending, and in AnAkA I found a deeply aligned cocreator. When AnAkA first sent me the treatment for the music video, I actually gasped. I don’t think I have ever felt so artistically understood before; we both agreed that there was a sacred synergy between us and continue to feel that way. Together, we perceive that the world we know is collapsing and that we owe it to future generations to birth in a more life-affirming world together. That message is urgent and is at the core of ‘Teach Us of Endings,’ and it is also what drove the collaboration. In the film, we center the more-than-human, the unseen realm, the sacred, the future (children), and the wisdom of our elders as storytellers. We chose to focus on dance because I had this sense while writing the song that to be human is to choose to dance til the end, and in doing so, we honor life. With this song, we commit to art that is woven in devotion and in collaboration with all life.”

Doe Paoro will also facilitate a special Autumn Equinox healing song circle at Anima Mundi in Los Angeles on Saturday, September 20 from 7–9 pm. The intimate gathering will honor the release of Doe Paoro’s new album, Living Through Collapse. More information and tickets are available here.

Over the course of her kaleidoscopic career, Doe Paoro has made her music into a vessel for transformation of all kinds: catharsis, awakening, and the deliberate shedding of old patterns and worn-out beliefs. At the heart of her musical expression is an unshakeable faith in the power of music to heal, awaken, and unify consciousness. Paoro’s work includes touring internationally, giving sound baths, facilitating music in ceremonial spaces, and more.

“In recent years, I’ve been consumed by an awareness of how the world is collapsing - not just the environment, but also the intertwined systems and legacies of power, colonialism, capitalism, racism, and structural inequity, all driving us toward unsustainable and life-denying futures,” the Costa Rica-based singer-songwriter says. “This album came from asking myself how we step into the responsibility of this moment and how music can hold space for repair, as well as the seeding of new possibilities.”

“This is a record about grief, repair and possibility,” Paoro continues. “It’s about the karmic responsibility of being born, and a call to action to fight for the generations not yet born.” She continues, “It’s a sobering look of the unsustainability of where we are as a human and

more-than-human family with our intersecting injustices and inequalities, wars, ecocide, and a rending of the social fabric, and it’s a plea that we don’t give up, but rather join in action towards collective liberation for all. This is a record that holds space for duality, paradox, and contradiction, and then transcending all of it. I hope it will serve as a salve, guide, and space-holder for the times that are coming.”

The first full-length album from Paoro since 2018’s Soft Power (a soul-leaning LP produced by Amy Winehouse collaborator Jimmy Hogarth), Living Through Collapse marks the latest entry in a sonically adventurous catalog that also includes 2015’s After (a moody convergence of R&B and synth-pop, made with members of Bon Iver’s creative circle). This time around, she has assembled an eclectic mix of producers including Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), Chris Sholar (Esperanza Spalding, Solange), Lagartijeando (an Argentinian luminary known for inventively merging Latin folk and electronic music), and Liam Fletcher (a UK-based musician whose credits include Swiss singer/songwriter Danit). Co-produced by Devin Gati (who also helmed production on Paoro’s 2022 EP Divine Surrendering) and partly recorded in Costa Rica with a lineup of local musicians, Living Through Collapse embodies an earthy yet resplendent sound that perfectly mirrors its globe-spanning origins.

“The way we made this record was very mycelial,” notes Paoro, referring to the underground networks of filaments that enable complex communication among ecosystems. “Devin and I started these songs together and then reached out to people all over the world, with the goal of coming up with the best possible offering to meet this moment.”

The album artwork for Living Through Collapse was created by multi-media artist Elena Stonaker. On the collaboration, Paoro says, "The artwork is a collage from a painting that Elena Stonaker made for the cover art for the full length record. I have been working with Tsto studio in Finland to build up a visual language by remixing her painting in different forms for the single artwork, a language that centers animism and the mystery."