Q&A: Indigo De Souza Leaps into the Unknown with New Album ‘Precipice’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photography Credit: Hannah Sommer
INDIGO DE SOUZA HAS NEVER BEEN ONE TO LOOK AWAY FROM THE ABYSS — On Precipice, her boldest and most pop-forward release yet, Indigo De Souza isn’t shying away from the edge—she’s diving headfirst into it. Teaming up with producer Elliott Kozel, the singer-songwriter has crafted a record that fuses her emotionally fearless lyricism with explosive, euphoric sonics. It’s a brave evolution that’s sonically brighter, but no less piercing.
“I feel constantly on the precipice, of something horrible, or something beautiful—something that will change my life for better or for worse,” De Souza reflects. That duality is the lifeblood of Precipice, which confronts transformation with clarity, even when it stings. The album’s title track is a microcosm of this balance De Souza singing, “Coming to a precipice / Holding on for dear life / Looking out into the world / Everything has gone dark” before swelling into something larger, more illuminated.
Across the album, De Souza finds catharsis in surrender, using the architecture of pop to process grief, hope and joy. She dials up the energy without sacrificing the diaristic vulnerability that made her previous albums (All of This Will End, Any Shape You Take) cult favorites. Where those records leaned into lo-fi textures and internal excavations, Precipice is outward-looking, expansive—sonically and spiritually. There’s a full-bodied sense of joy and experimentation here, and it’s hard-won.
Much of that evolution came from throwing herself into unfamiliar creative spaces. Trading the comfort of solitude for spontaneous studio sessions in Los Angeles, De Souza embraced unknown territory both personally and professionally. Rather than retreating inward as she had on past records, she threw herself into blind sessions with a new roster of collaborators, allowing instinct to guide the creative direction. “I’d been wanting to work on more pop-leaning music for a while, so when I came out to LA I made sure to meet with people that could help bring that to life,” she says. “I wanted to make music that could fill your heart with euphoria while you dance along.”
In support of the album, De Souza has announced a headlining tour across the summer and fall. The tour doubles as a platform for impact. In partnership with PLUS1, one dollar from every ticket sold will benefit The Trevor Project, an organization dedicated to ending suicide among LGBTQ+ youth through crisis intervention, peer support, and advocacy.
With Precipice, Indigo De Souza doesn’t just flirt with the edge, she transforms it into a stage.
Photography Credit: Hannah Sommer
LUNA: Thank you for talking to Luna. Our readers would love to get to know you and your music more. For any readers who aren’t familiar with you yet, what kind of atmosphere or sonic world do you aim to create for your listeners?
INDIGO: I'm mostly trying to create a space of honesty. I only write about my own honest experiences in the world, and I don't write fiction, so I'm really just inviting the listener to find comfortability with their own emotions and expressing and feeling them.
LUNA: You have released your fourth album Precipice and a huge congratulations is in order! What is the inspiration behind the project and what themes or emotions do you explore?
INDIGO: I've never made an album that was really themed in any specific way on purpose, but this album definitely has themes of heartbreak. I noticed that some of the songs are heartbreak songs, but they sound really happy, which is kind of a funny theme, just mixing the two emotions.
I went into making this album with the mindset that I was going to make pop music, because I've always wanted to make pop music. I've always wanted to work with someone who can make pop music, and when I started working with Elliot, even though he's not really a pop producer, he does really well with pop. He creates a really comfortable space for expressing emotion. He is so good at what he does and everything that he plays always draws so much emotion out of me. I was really letting it fly. It was like I was writing in a journal. It feels like the themes are really just my emotional state.
LUNA: Precipice feels like a major turning point sonically and emotionally. What personal precipice were you standing on while making this album?
INDIGO: I came to LA from North Carolina just to visit a couple years ago. I came out to LA to do blind sessions. I came to do sessions where you just go in and you don't know the person, and you try to make music together and see what happens. I did a bunch of them, but the first one that I ever did was with Elliott Kozel, and we just clicked really well and immediately started writing a song together and that led us down a path of making many songs together until we felt like we had an album. It almost felt accidental. I didn't mean to make an album at that time. I was just going to play music with people, and I had a whole other album that I had written that I was thinking was going to be my next album, but then I accidentally made an album with Elliot that ended up being Precipice.
LUNA: What did the creative process behind Precipice look like compared to your past records? Did you experiment more or take any new risks compared to All of This Will End?
INDIGO: I used many more electronic sounds than I've ever used. I used a lot of synths. I just really let Elliot do so much of the production, which I feel like with my past albums, I've gone into the sessions knowing what I want the songs to sound like, generally, and I often have demos for the songs. But in this case, me and Elliott were just creating on the spot in the room together and writing as we went. We weren't working off of any demo. Normally, he would be playing something and I would be playing something, and I'd be singing over top of it, and we'd figure out what section we're working on and then we'd go from there. It was very different because I was writing the songs in the room with him instead of writing them before I came to the studio.
LUNA: What did a typical day in the studio look like during the making of Precipice? Were there any rituals or routines that helped you get into the creative zone?
INDIGO: Me and Elliott are both very simple. We just would show up, and we usually started around 11 and then ended around 6 p.m. It was just a daytime hang and we would just play music, and then we'd get lunch at some point.
LUNA: What is your favorite song from Precipice and why do you love this song? Is there a certain element, lyric or message that you gravitate towards the most?
INDIGO: “Be Like The Water” is my favorite, at least lyrically. There's a lyric in that song that says you can leave if you want to, and you don't have to say why. It just really felt like I expressed something that I'd been thinking about in my life for a long time, but I expressed it really simply. I feel like I did that in a lot of the other lyrics in that song too. I feel that one's really fun to do live too.
LUNA: You’ve partnered with PLUS1 and The Trevor Project for your upcoming tour, supporting life-saving resources for LGBTQ+ youth. What does this cause mean to you personally?
INDIGO: I love that they have a suicide prevention hotline with the Trevor Project, which means a lot to me personally, because I struggle with suicidal ideation and have my whole life. I really heavily support the trans community and have a lot of friends within that. LGBTQIA+ youth are facing a mental health crisis—and the resources they need are under attack. That’s why I’m raising money for The Trevor Project. Their 24/7 crisis hotline offers life-saving support to young people who too often feel unseen, unsafe or alone.
LUNA: What kind of atmosphere do you hope to create on your headline tour? What do you want fans to feel when they walk away from one of your shows?
INDIGO: Hopefully they just feel like they were in an open and honest space, and hopefully they felt like they were part of a community and were accepted in that space. I just always want people to feel really safe and comfortable at my shows and free to express themselves in whatever way they want. I hope everyone stays hydrated.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would like to share with Luna?
INDIGO: I feel nervous because I'm putting out music that is different from music I've put out before. Some people like it when artists do that, and other people hate it. It makes me a little nervous, but I'm also really excited because I love what I'm making and that's all that really matters to me. My house that I used to live in was destroyed in the flood in hurricane Helene, and then right after that, I ended up coming to LA and starting a new album. I have a new album after Precipice that is that we're wrapping up right now. That should be done soon and then hopefully will come out early next year at some point. I'm just excited to keep working on music, and working with my mom on album covers and just putting out music.
