Q&A: Dani Stocksdale Makes Peace With ‘Whatever This Is’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY SHEVON GREENE ☆
DANI STOCKSDALE KNOWS ALL ABOUT—revisiting a version of yourself you’ve already outgrown. That’s where Stocksdale finds herself while reflecting on Whatever This Is, her debut EP out today. Instead of revisiting these songs of yearning and desire in a negative light, she instead learned to see them as honest snapshots of someone who was still learning her worth.
Whatever This Is captures the emotional limbo of your twenties across seven tracks. The songs explore the contradictions of infatuation and reality, undefined relationships and the sliver of hope that maybe next time things will be different.
During our conversation, Stocksdale spoke with a sense of tenderness about the person who wrote these songs. While Whatever This Is documents insecurity, yearning and emotional limbo, she now reflects on that chapter with compassion instead of criticism and recognizes just how much she’s grown since finishing the project.
We caught up with Stocksdale to talk about revisiting old emotions, learning to value her own time, the parallels of humor and heartbreak and why Whatever This Is is an honest retelling of where she once was in life. Keep reading for more.
LUNA: Last time we talked about "Cigarette Rush" and that push-and-pull of situationships. Now that the EP is coming up, how do you think that song fits into the bigger emotional story of Whatever This Is?
STOCKSDALE: I think that's definitely the starting point of the EP, being unsure and unsteady in relationships. Then there's a lot of internal turmoil with "Sexy" and "Comety," where it's like, "I need this. I need to be desired by someone else in order to feel that about myself." I think we're kind of left in this cycle. There's never really a conclusion. If anything, it's like "Again," where it's just, "I'm doing it again, and I'm doing it again." It's this repetitive cycle I've caught myself in.
That's just kind of true to my story right now. I finished this project last year, but only now am I starting to see the value in just being by myself until something valuable presents itself; something that's actually worthy of my time. Situationships are fun and all that, but I'm starting to really value my time and who I spend it with. I think that'll probably be part of the next project, but with this one, it definitely ends still up in the air, still unsure, without any real answers.
LUNA: How do you look back at those songs now that you’re in a different place?
STOCKSDALE: Listening back recently—especially to "Sexy" and "Comety"—I was finishing the mixes and masters, and I hadn't heard them in a while. I started crying in the car. Maybe I was just emotional that day, but I also think I just felt sad that I ever experienced those feelings. I almost look at the girl who wrote those songs like she's my child, and I feel sad that she ever had to feel like she wasn't good enough.
I know you asked me something similar last time about whether I approached things differently, and I said no because I was really in the middle of whatever situationship I was going through. I was really sad then. Now, with some time and space, I do think I learned something from all of this. I really hope that whenever the next romantic thing comes into my life, I'll be able to show this new respect I have for myself. I do think I'm a different person than the one these songs are talking about, and hopefully that shows in my life now.
LUNA: That's awesome. It’s always so cool to see that individual growth.
STOCKSDALE: I had literally just made the same mistake when we talked last time, so I was still dealing with the repercussions of it. Now it's been a few months, and I'm like, "Oh my God, that was so silly." But despite how silly it was, the feelings were still so real. You still feel them so strongly.
Now that I've been out of that romance world for a little while and have just been doing my own thing, it's easier to say all of this with a clear head. But who knows what'll happen when the next thing pops up? I'll only be able to tell you a few months from now.
I've also been supporting my friends who are putting themselves out there and going on first dates. I'm so happy for them and proud of them for doing it. But then sometimes you hear these disappointing stories, and you're like, "Man... where are the good ones?" I know they're out there. They're just hiding really well.
LUNA: I wanted to ask about "Comety" specifically because the title immediately stood out to me. It also feels more intimate and stripped back than some of the other songs. I'd love to hear where the title came from and what makes that song feel different from the rest.
STOCKSDALE: That's so funny because I was literally talking to the producer of that song last week, and I was like, "Every time I talk to someone about this project, they always bring up 'Comety,'" which is funny because I wasn't even sure if I was going to put that one on the EP. The song talks about comets. The hook is, "Sparks should fly like a comet, he would try if he wanted." When we were naming the session—whether it was in Logic, Ableton, or Pro Tools—I think there was some sort of miscommunication, or maybe he just mistyped it, and it ended up being called "Comety." When we kept texting about it back and forth, that just became what we called it.
I actually thought it was kind of funny because it sounds like "comedy," the opposite of tragedy. I think there's some humor in these early-stage relationships. It's almost like you can laugh at yourself. When I picture it, I almost imagine a comet flying by with little "ha ha ha" bubbles around it. The whole point of the song came from a friend telling me, "You won't have to question whether a guy likes you. He'll make it very known." She said, "They don't play games the way we do."
I definitely overthink things. I'm like, "Maybe if I do this, he'll think that..." But she told me, "If you're even questioning it, it's probably a no." That was really hard to hear, but it was true. Talking to all my guy friends confirmed it. So I brought that into the writing session because I thought it was heartbreaking.
The song was about this guy I'd had a crush on for years. I finally started hanging out with him, and I had built it up in my head to be this huge, spontaneous, sparks-flying-everywhere moment. Instead, it was so... planned. I'd come over, we'd shotgun beers, but even that wasn't spontaneous because we had to go into the shower to do it since he didn't want beer getting everywhere. He's just so organized. Everything about it felt like the opposite of spontaneous. He'd leave the room to answer work emails. It all felt so anticlimactic. But I kept hanging out with him because I thought maybe if I gave it more time, the feelings would come. I do that a lot. I convince myself it'll eventually click. But it wasn't even a slow burn. I was having to put in all the effort to make it feel fun, sexy and flirty.
That's where the bridge comes from: "Not quite how I wanted this to happen, so I'm acting like there's passion, keep his ego intact." I was more worried about hurting his feelings than admitting I wasn't enjoying myself. Internally I was telling myself, "Snap out of it. You shouldn't have to work this hard."
LUNA: I also wanted to ask about the track "Sexy." One lyric that really stuck out to me was when you kind of zoom out and admit that, if you saw yourself on the street, you probably wouldn't look at yourself twice. Are writing those types of lyrics difficult, or do they come out naturally?
STOCKSDALE: That second verse in "Sexy" literally poured out of me. I got up from the session to go to the bathroom, and I was singing the melody. Then I sang the second verse, came back out, and it was me, one other writer, Andie Mechanic, and the producer, Brian Brundage. I was a little nervous to say what I'd come up with because I was like, "This might be kind of cringe." The lyric is, "If I saw me on the street, I wouldn't look at me twice / So how could I be the reason you fantasize at night?" I was almost singing it like a rap. I shared it, and my co-writer really liked it. It's honestly one of my favorite parts of that song.
At first, I felt really nervous and uncomfortable sharing it with people because of that second verse. I'd almost hold my breath during that part and think, "Hopefully they don't understand what I'm saying." When I'd share it on TikTok, I'd even speed it up and make it sound kind of chipmunk-y so people would understand it less. Now I don't really feel cringe about it anymore because it's so true to how I felt and my experience. It wasn't hard to come up with because it poured out of me so easily, but actually sharing it and pushing for it was the uncomfortable part.
LUNA: It's such a relatable thought, but I don't think people talk about it very often because they're in their own insecurities. Nobody really wants to admit those thoughts out loud. Hearing it in a song just brings it to another level.
STOCKSDALE: I feel like it's a thought I've had so many times. Especially going to school in New York, you'd walk down the street and see so many beautiful people. I'd do double takes of guys, girls, everyone, and think, "Oh my God." Then, in the same exact moment, I'd think, "I don't think I would do that for me, though." So who's going to do that for me? Why would anyone fantasize about me? It's wanting that type of communication with your partner. And it's not surface-level. I don't want someone to just say, "You're so sexy." It's more that I want to feel wanted by someone. If I feel that from you, I'll start to believe it more myself because, especially being single, it's so hard to believe someone would think about you that way.
That's why I love having those deep, emotional conversations with anyone I'm hanging out with. I almost like embarrassing myself at the beginning. I don't shy away from sharing how much I liked someone. I told one guy, "From the first day I met you, I had a crush on you." I don't even try to be cool about it because I think it's important to share. There's an aspect of being mysterious and all that, but I actually find it kind of sexy and fun to know how much you were thinking about me and how much I was thinking about you.
LUNA: Was there one song on the EP that surprised you the most while making it?
STOCKSDALE: I think "Bug Eyes." When I left that session, I didn't really like the song. I played it for a friend immediately afterward, and I almost wanted to turn it off because I wasn't crazy about it. Then it ended up becoming my favorite song, and that's why I decided to put it out first. I think it's a lot of my friends' and family's favorite too. The lyrics are weird, but the production is really cool, and that feeling of wanting to be wanted is displayed really vividly in the chorus.
I also really loved "Sexy" when I wrote it. I don't know if everyone will like it, but I personally really like that one. It's been sitting in the vault since 2024. I go through phases where I'm like, "Wow, I really like 'Pretty Thing'," or "Magnetic," and then later it'll be "Bug Eyes" again. Honestly, all of them have been my favorite at some point, but "Bug Eyes" definitely surprised me the most.
LUNA: Now that Whatever This Is is out, do you feel yourself moving into a new chapter creatively after this? Or are you still sitting with anything from this EP? What direction do you hope to go next?
STOCKSDALE: I started writing a lot of new music at the beginning of this year. While I like the songs I've written, none of them have stuck with me the way the songs on this project did. That made me realize I'm still in this discovery phase of figuring out what's going to come next. I've also just been consuming a lot of new music and discovering different artists. I'm getting inspired by random people who come up on my Spotify.
Conceptually, I know what I want to talk about because I've gone through some things and written so many ideas down in my notes app. Sound-wise and melodically, though, I still feel like I'm forming what the next project is going to be. I definitely want to experiment more with the production, especially the vocal production. I also want to get even more vulnerable and even more specific. I'm trying to figure out how to include this one person's name in a song without actually naming them.
With Whatever This Is, that whole visual world came after I made the music. I started looking through my Instagram and realized, "Wow, this has really formed its own identity"—the colors, the vibe, everything. None of that was planned while I was making the record. I think it'd be really cool this time around to have that world already created while I'm making the music for the next project.
