“Whenever I’m working with other people, they’ll have something their album is about, like, ‘Oh, it’s about space in 2072’,” KUČKA—Laura Jane Lowther—tells Apple Music. “I like the way you can access little fantasy pockets in your brain.” The Western Australia-born, LA-based producer and singer has worked with everyone from Flume and Kendrick Lamar to Vince Staples and SOPHIE, but this is only her second solo album. Where 2021’s Wrestling was completely personal, Can You Hear Me Dreaming? looks outward, and is comprised of made-up stories and the experiences of others. “A lot of them are based on multiple stories melded together, but we created a framework to make it more interesting or understandable,” she says, referring to herself and her wife, director and artist Dillon Howl, who contributed lyrics and ideas to several tracks. “We were trying to make them personal, even if they were made-up. We called it emotional voyeurism, and were like, ‘This is creepy, but in a fun way.’” Below, Lowther talks through the stories on Can You Hear Me Dreaming? with Howl chiming in to shed light on two tracks she penned the lyrics for. “Wasting Time (til the end of the world)” “I was trying to write from the position of someone really feeling the chaos of the world. The lyrics are totally dark, reflecting the endless nature of chaos and everything that comes at you from the news. I didn’t want to write any lyrics that were, like, ‘Be happy’ or ‘This isn’t terrible’, because it is kind of terrible. So I wanted to make the music something you can thrash around to, and at least get some physical energy out as a relief.” “Heaven” “It’s a sexy song. Wanting someone, wanting to please them, and realising that the excess stuff everyone always talks about doesn’t matter when you actually find someone. We don’t need a week in a hotel. We don’t need a week on an island. I’m sure those things would be amazing. I would love a million dollars, but not as much as finding someone you really want to enjoy pleasure with.” “Can’t Help It” “I wrote it after chatting to a bunch of people at a party. I was with a bunch of women who were producers, and we ended up at a party with a bunch of skater bros. It was funny because everyone had their own version of people telling them how they should be creating art. I wanted to make it patronising in return, like, ‘Oh, poor guy, you can’t help it. It’s just in your nature to be patronising’, as a way of having a bit of power in that situation.” “Cry Cry Cry” “I really think that sometimes a bop can just make you feel better. So I wanted to do that.” “Heavyweight” “We can all have this deluded part of our self, like ego in a way. ‘I’m a heavyweight, I’m right, I’m going to make this work.’ And you can get stuck in a cycle of delusion caused by pride or overconfidence, but at the same time, I love that feeling. It’s become so common on the internet for people to portray that side of them first. I feel pressured to be always confident and display that. I love it, but I think it can get you in trouble at the same time. It’s so hard sometimes to balance when you should be confident and push for what you need, especially if you’re in a creative field, especially when sometimes you feel like you’re not being heard, but I can overcompensate. Finding the balance is difficult, but kind of a fun game.” “Communal Reverie” (with PESH) Dillon Howl: “It’s about community and symbiosis. It is influenced by the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, who emphasised the way all living organisms interact: ‘You cultivate the flower in yourself, so that I will be beautiful.’” “Mountain” “There’s that concept of deep time or mountain time, the idea that everything is on different scales. Think about something from the perspective of a mountain that’s existed for thousands of years. You’re just a blip, but the mountain gets to see all of this change. I was imagining if you were just sitting on top of a mountain and you could see the whole of LA and how it changes, the past 100 years would be one second of what you would see. Seasons would feel like one day. For us it’s like, ‘It’s breakfast time’. For a mountain, it’s like, ‘It’s spring, now it’s summer’.” “One More Night” (feat. Flume) “It’s really about obsession with a hookup. A lot of people have experienced those people who you keep running into or going back to. With ‘One More Night’, it’s like, even when you say it’s the last time, it’s definitely not going to be the last time.” “Wedding” “It was like, ‘I’ll still come to your wedding, I love you. I’m here for you’. But it’s hard to enjoy yourself when you feel like someone is doing something so destructive. Two of my friends have been in terrible relationships. One of them was with someone who was totally abusive, thank God they’re not together. With the other, the guy was just weird and kind of racist and it was like, ‘What are you doing?’. So the song was just a way of getting those feelings out without it being so true. I’ve been in a situation like that, and it’s easy to not see what is right in front of you, to just not register what everyone else around you is very easily able to register. And it’s hard sometimes to listen when your friends try and tell you what the issues are. So I get it from both sides, but the song is about saying I’ll support you now, and then when you hopefully break up, I’ll be there to support you then, too.” “Messed Up” “There’s that theory about how, when you meet someone and there’s a crazy obsessive dynamic, apparently your body is trying to signal something to you about it being ready bad. I remember hearing that, and I’ve definitely met people when I was dating and seen it as well, where the dynamic is so obsessive that it’s a red flag. Everyone’s had these relationships where things are obviously bad or going to go wrong at some point, but you have to let it run its course.” “Gross Body” (with PESH) DH: “I love the question, ‘If you close your eyes how do you know you have a body?’. It points to our direct experience or what is known through our felt senses. ‘Gross Body’ is an homage to this felt experience and all the chaotic and sublime truths that come with feeling our bodies responding to the world around us.” “Not There” “It sounds a little different to the rest of the album, but the process of writing it made sense. I wrote it based on a GIF that was from the perspective from a really tall building, and you could see other buildings and stuff, and the rain was coming down. Me and Dillon actually wrote the lyrics based on a completely made-up story, and we made our own story, but it all came from that one GIF.”