Q&A: Quinnie on the Paper Doll Tour and Following Angels
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY LUCY BULLINGTON ☆
“CAN’T YOU SEE I’M TRYNA FOLLOW ANGELS?”— sings indie artist quinnie on her sophomore album paper doll. Released on July 24, the 15-track record offers an unflinching look at the indie artist's love, relationships, heartbreak and trauma. It’s sad, it’s playful, it’s catchy, it’s deep… it’s unmistakably quinnie.
After releasing her debut album flounder in 2023, quinnie quickly found herself on everyone’s radar. One track in particular, “touch tank,” a dreamy and raw reflection on intimacy that surrounds oral sex exploded across platforms like TikTok and YouTube. The viral momentum landed her an opening spot for indie pop band The Japanese House on their North American tour, solidifying her presence in the alt-pop scene.
While flounder introduced listeners to quinnie’s whimsical yet vulnerable universe, paper doll marks a more introspective journey. Where flounder leaned heavily on ethereal textures and coming-of-age wonder, paper doll is sharper, more direct, and often devastating in its honesty. There’s a weight to it as she dives headfirst into themes of objectification, disassociation, abuse, and survival.
The album is both playful and cutting, often disguising gut-punch lyrics beneath whimsical, upbeat melodies. On the title track, “paper doll,” she repeats the haunting refrain, “It’s been nice to have you see just how lovable I can be, but I’m not,” capturing the ache of being seen but not truly known. Throughout the record, she continuously describes the female experience of feeling desired, dismissed, and misunderstood.
A throughline in all of quinnie’s work is her talent for simple, piercing observations. She’ll write a lyric that swings from delicate imagery of the ocean floor to devastating details of sexual abuse, and sometimes in the same breath. It’s disarming, it’s raw, and above all, it’s real. She offers no time for use to process between the beauty and brutality of life in her music, and that’s what makes her music resonate so deeply.
Now, quinnie is bringing paper doll to life on stage, kicking off a global tour that spans over twenty major cities. Just before her performance at Racket in New York City, Luna had the chance to sit down with her. Read our full conversation below.
LUNA: So how has the tour been?
QUINNIE: It’s been really good! I haven’t told many people this yet, but I got horrendous food poisoning three days into touring and I was vomiting in the van all day, so I’m trying to get back to full form now. Otherwise it’s been good. Hopefully it’s up from there.
LUNA: Are there any tracks you love to play live so far?
QUINNIE: I really love playing one song called “absence of” on the album. It’s really fun to play.
LUNA: I love that one! I also read that you make all of your own cover art. What’s that process like?
QUINNIE: I think I’m just really stubborn about the way things look, causing me to have a really thick head about all my visual stuff. I always spend a lot of time on the covers. I can see a world in which I go with what someone else has, but I like the concept of having the majority of the output being directly from myself.
LUNA: That’s so interesting. Do you think you are the same way with the production of your music?
QUINNIE: I actually just spoke to someone about this. I think I’m less of a control freak with the music because I am privileged enough to work with people who really get what I like and how I want things to sound. My producers are just amazing and I love them so much. And I think if I didn’t have such harmonious relationships with them I would be a lot more anxious and neurotic about the process.
LUNA: I noticed that both the album cover and the lyricism for paper doll contain a ton of allusions to religion, especially that of Catholicism. What inspired this?
QUINNIE: I was baptized and raised around a lot of Catholicism, but my parents were very much like, “you should find your own thing.” I was also very atheistic as a teenager and cynical. But something just happened later in life for me where I started to believe in something…not secular.
LUNA: What do you believe in?
QUINNIE: I believe in some form of god. I don’t think it’s a person or—
LUNA: A girl with a seashell in her palm! (referencing a lyric in her song “Baja Bird” where she sings, “Cause God is a girl with a seashell in her palm / you can hear something mighty in something so small”).
QUINNIE: (Laughs) Not even that you know what I mean? That was just for shits n’ giggles. I think everyone has the choice but I think it’s way easier to live if you believe in something. And that was just something that really hit me around the time that I started writing this record. Not that there’s any come-to-Jesus songs on this album that’s like, “wait I finally believe in God!”, but I think I just found some spirituality when I got into my 20s. And a lot of the songs have Catholic references but I wouldn’t say I’m Catholic, I’m just alluding to what I know.
LUNA: Yeah that’s super interesting. One thing I also love about your lyrics is how in touch with your senses you seem to be. I love the lyric, “The sun on our cheeks makes us all squint our eyes” on “Baja Bird.” What is your process with this such descriptive lyricism? Is it something that you feel happens to you physically in the moment and you write it down immediately? Or are you in your room later thinking about your life and your experiences and that’s where you harvest a lyric like that? Tell me about the process.
QUINNIE: What I would consider my best line are ones that I come up with in a random circumstance. When I’m showering or washing the dishes. I think my best skill is being able to recognize when I’ve had a thought that I think is good enough to capture. Because I think everyone has valuable thoughts but it’s about knowing when to stop and be like “that’s the one let me hold on to that”. So I do a lot of that. I honestly find it really difficult to sit down and be like “let me write a song and think about stuff”.
LUNA: What would you say is your favorite lyric in paper doll?
QUINNIE: There’s this one song that we aren’t playing tonight, it’s called “forgiveness.” There’s a line, “Threw an hourglass at you to cut us to the chase / No amount of blood I drew could turn your love to hate,” and I just love that because there’s a lot of word play and I thought it was clever and fun.
LUNA: That’s beautiful.
QUINNIE: Thank you! I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite emotionally but that’s a fun one.
LUNA: Were there any tracks that you were nervous to put out?
QUINNIE: No. But on my first album there were a lot of tracks I was super nervous to put out. I don’t feel nervous about how random people I don’t know feel about it, I more feel nervous about how my family and friends receive it. The first song I put out that got a lot of attention was super sexual.
LUNA: “Touch Tank”?
QUINNIE: Yeah! It was kind of like baptism by fire, so now I can’t really be scared. I remember playing it for my whole family and my Grandma was like “nice new song Quinn…”. Yeah it was really interesting, and I didn’t let them listen to it until the song came out so it was really a surprise to them. I mean what was I supposed to do!? Sit them down and be like, “Listen to this!”. It was pretty awkward, and there were a few on that album that I felt weird about but this one not so much.
LUNA: That’s really funny. One thing I also love about your discography is how much you mention the ocean and just nature in general. I’m wondering if you’d say you write so much about that because you’re intensely curious or intensely connected with all of it?
QUINNIE: I think I was really curious about it when I was a child. I really wanted to be a marine biologist, but I eventually gave up on that dream. Now I’m definitely curious about it all. I think when I was younger I would’ve said I felt intensely connected to it, but I think I’ve found that it’s pretty natural for us all to feel inspired by nature. It’s effectively our home and I think it’s no surprise that the ocean, trees, etc. show up in so many artist’s lyrics. I think I’ve come to see it more as something that’s not even specific to me but…. pretty human. But I love nature, I try to be in it as much as I can. I definitely don’t feel like I have a unique relationship to it though.
LUNA: That’s so interesting because it really seems like you do have such a unique connection to it.
QUINNIE: Thank you!
LUNA: Who inspires you musically?
QUINNIE: To be honest with you, I have a really hard time listening to music when I’m making music. When I’m in the depths of an album I really don’t like to listen to music. Thankfully right now I’m not, so I can enjoy it in a normal way. But I’m really inspired by ambient music. It’s hard for me to be inspired by someone’s writing because I want my own self to feel really unfiltered, and if I listen to someone else’s writing too much I feel it can show up in my own writing. So I love stuff with no lyrics.
LUNA: What song was the hardest to make on the record?
QUINNIE: This might be a shitty response but honestly none of them. Writing wise they all felt super natural. Which hasn’t really been the case for me in the past. I genuinely just put on this album…what’s happened. So writing it all felt really easy. The song “Rockstar Baby” on the production side took a long time because the tone of it is a little cheeky and corny for my taste. So at a certain point I just had to say “it is what it is.”
LUNA: I love that one.
QUINNIE: Thank you. It’s definitely the one that I’m the most iffy about. I mean it’s corny in its own way but I love serious songs, and that one's… not. But we reproduced that song quite a bit and ended up using an older version of it eventually. I just had to get over myself with that one.
LUNA: Was the making of the song “hate fuck” really emotional? Just with how deep the song is. Or do you eventually get to the point in production where you feel a bit removed from it?
QUINNIE: Maybe, but honestly no. I think when I write a song I feel pretty prepared to write it. I like to write about things I’ve processed or I’m en route to having fully processed. And so obviously that song is pretty heavy but it’s all stuff I feel comfortable talking about now.
LUNA: Did you have a visceral moment where you thought, “I have to do music”? Or was it more of a natural occurrence?
QUINNIE: I really wanted to sing when I was a kid, and I also had a million other things I fantasized doing when I was a child. But then in high school I got really into music and that felt super natural. As of right now I’m not where I want to be yet in my career, but I still look back at how I felt when I was 15 or 16 and think about how I got further than I thought I would. When I was 15 I knew I wanted to do this but I didn’t really know what the outcome would be. I’m really not much of a planner so I don’t know if I ever conceptualized as a kid what my future would look like as an artist. It felt good and I just wanted to keep doing it.
LUNA: Where do you want to be in your career?
QUINNIE: I don’t even know. It’s just hard to not want… more. I just got my first vinyls pressed which was so sick. There’s all these little things that pile up, but it happens so slowly and you really have to be patient. But when you look at the big picture you think, “Holy shit I got all these things,” but at the moment it feels like a little step. But I just want to expand a wider audience and just keep reaching people.
LUNA: What do you want people to take away from paper doll?
QUINNIE: The most satisfying outcome is when someone comes to me and tells me they feel understood or that I read their mind. I struggle a lot in life and in music with feeling misunderstood or feeling like no matter how I describe something it isn’t hitting the right chord. The barriers of words are tough to run into. But if someone tells me they feel understood I’m just gonna trust that my music is doing the right thing.
