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Photo by Ron Dadon

In her freshly released, debut EP Whatever This Is, Mexican-American artist Dani Stocksdale perfectly captures the feeling of not fully knowing where you are in life or love, and the both beautiful sense of infinite possibility, but also the fear of uncertainty it comes with.

Before embarking on a solo career, Dani spent years making covers with her friends as part of Sonder, a project that gave her an early taste of using YouTube and sharing music with the world (plus getting recognized by fans at Why Don’t We concerts). Since then, she has ventured out to LA, where she has found a creative community and continued shaping a sound that is still evolving alongside her. ¨I'm really proud of these songs and have spent the last year listening to them nonstop, so I'm excited they're finally coming out¨, she tells me. 

The beauty of Dani´s songwriting lies in her ability to articulate the feelings many of us struggle to put into words. Across Whatever This Is she captures the strange limbo of modern dating with remarkable honesty, exploring everything from situationships and uncertainty, to the desire to feel truly seen by another person. Her lyrics are vivid and deeply personal, yet universal enough to feel like pages torn from a collective diary; and she loves a double entendre: ¨I love making people think a little bit with the lyrics, like could there be a double meaning¨? Paired with a beautifully soft voice, Dani invites listeners into her world with an openness that feels both comforting and brave. 

In this interview we discuss the many questions that arise from situationships, her journey into music and what she hopes is next for her career - including the possibility of writing more songs in Spanish.

OnesToWatch: Hola Dani! It’s a pleasure to meet my tocaya (namesake).

Dani Stocksdale: Dany! It’s great to meet you too.

And I'm actually curious because you moved to LA recently. How's that been going?

So, it's been about a year now, and it's been better than I expected. I found a community really quick. There were some people from my college here, and then some people from trips that I did out here that I got closer to. And it's really nice to be amongst a big creative community. But, as much as my friends have become my family out here, I do miss my family in Florida so I visit them as much as I can.

Especially in the music industry, how do you feel like most people deal with this issue of finding your people?

Luckily, I think in music, you meet people so quickly, and everyone is so connected. Just by doing some sessions, I found really close friends. I found that everyone, for the most part, makes it feel like a really supportive community. 

And also, I love that I have friends in different aspects of the entertainment industry. It's so cool because, like, I mean, I loved acting growing up. So, sometimes I'll read through sides with my friends that are prepping for an acting class or an audition. And through that, I get to revisit a passion of mine. I have friends that invite me to table reads and stuff like that, and it feels fun to step away from music for a second and try other things.

Exactly, and I mean, not to mention, but lately with shows like Off Campus, we saw what other creative industries can do for musicians.

TV shows do crazy things for music. I forced everyone around me to watch it [Off Campus]. I tried to convince them by skipping through and showing them specific scenes hahahaWhile watching with a friend that I write music with, we were saying, ¨Why do they always show people songwriting like that? Like, she just whips out her notebook and she's like jotting things down.You normally don't do it like that.”

Wait, what do you look like when you're songwriting? What's the realistic portrait?

I guess the notebook was what was different. I have my phone, my guitar, and I´m just kind of sitting there. It's more spontaneous than it is planned, you know?

I get it! Are you more of a lyric person?

Yeah, definitely words come before melodies for me. Like last night, for example, I was writing and I got to this idea of ¨magnum opus¨. I actually thought of the word ¨opus¨ and I was like, ¨What does that mean¨? So, I looked it up and then I started writing around that idea.

I loved school growing up and poetry, so I love making people think a little bit with the lyrics or making them question whether there is a double meaning there? Sometimes it's double entendres and maybe there's a little sexy meaning, but it can also not be sexy if you don't want it to be.

Sometimes, I almost let the lyrics take so much precedence that I try to fit a melody into this really long line, and I'm like, okay, I need to start over because this isn't gonna be singable, like, this isn't gonna be fun for anybody.

In your wonderful debut EP Whatever This Is, what is your favorite lyric in this new project?

I have so many, but I think it's probably from "Bug Eyes" where I say ¨Your wingspan could eat me whole¨. I always wanted to use the word "wingspan", and I usually like these really tall guys, and how their whole body just consumes me.

And then there's a song called Comety, which talks about comets. In it I say: ¨sparks should fly like a comet, he would try if he wanted¨. All my friends have told me, ¨girl, you won't have to question if a boy likes you, he will put in the effort if he wants to¨, you know? And it was just like, that is so hard to hear and it hurts so much because it's so true. I see when guys put in the effort for other girls.

I certainly relate. And specifically for "Bug Eyes", you have the lyric, which is also the title of your EP. So, I wanted to hear what Whatever This Is means to you.

For me it's kind of my answer for any question I get in my 20s. What's going on with this boy that you're seeing? What do you want to do? And it's like, ¨I don't know, whatever this is¨ (shrugs). Especially with how the dating world is now, I truly don't know what's going on. There is so much uncertainty and situations where people are ¨just hanging out or talking¨, that there truly is no other way to describe it than whatever this is.

However, on the other hand, I also love the positivity that it contains. Whatever This Is leaves everything open for interpretation and possibility, so I find that it can also be a very interesting and infinitely open thing.

But to play devil’s advocate, could it also be a fear then of certainty of committing to something because then the possibility is gone?

Oh definitely. I think it may be a deep seeded fear of mine that I don’t really admit, so I keep saying “whatever this is”. 

I also wanted to ask about the visuals, you made a really cute video trailer for the EP that has a beautiful retro style. What was your creative direction?

I wanted the trailer to feel like a digestible, short-content way to introduce people to the story of the EP. We originally had a different location planned, that felt a little more cottage and grandma-like, but it fell through at the last minute. So, we ended up shooting at the director's house, which actually worked perfectly. It gave everything this cool, retro feeling that fit the project really well.

The response completely caught me off guard. We were literally making tweaks to the video the morning I posted it thinking nothing of it, and then quickly people started connecting with it in a way I never expected. I've received messages from girls all over the world saying they felt seen by it, which is honestly all I could have hoped for.

It was so nice to see such a response. 

I think I'm also becoming less afraid of thinking visually as an artist. 

The more I make music, the more I want everything to feel cinematic. The second half of the trailer gets even more vulnerable, touching on being 25 and wanting to feel truly desired, and I’m excited to see how people connect with it

I also wanted to ask about your journey coming into music and finding your sound?

Before this project, I was actually in a band called Sonder with some of my best friends, mostly doing covers for fun. It was really cool because we are all really into music and so, on Fridays we would get together and learn how to use YouTube and make these covers. We would see what songs had come out that day and pressure ourselves to record until 2am and put the cover out as soon as possible, it was so fun! We got some recognition from it, like once at a Why Don’t We concert, a fan recognized us from covers we did of them.

That's so fun, I can imagine the excitement.

Yeah! And later on I went to summer programs at NYU and Berklee that opened my eyes to so much beyond just singing. I think I'm still developing my sound, and a lot of that comes from what I'm listening to and the producers I work with. We usually start sessions by sharing music we love, which lately has been a lot of Justin Bieber (laughs) . The producers who I worked on this project with have almost become like older siblings; I bring them my stories and secrets and they help me make sense of them. 

There is this song on the EP called "Again" that feels a little different from the rest. It´s the most recent one I´ve made and so I briefly considered saving it for another project, but I loved it too much not to include it. I'm really proud of these songs and have spent the last year listening to them nonstop, so I'm excited they're finally coming out. 

I wanted to ask about the song "Pretty Thing" and the lyrics “everything I did, I did it as a kid, you should have known better than I did”. I wonder if it’s someone that made you feel smaller or kidlike compared to them.

Oh that's a whole story (laughs). Here it was literally someone older than me. It was actually quite nice, but towards the end, despite being younger I felt like I handled stuff more maturely than they did. But you are so right that it could still be someone your age that makes you feel less than them or like you are less experienced. 

In a positive way though, they say that if someone makes you feel kidlike, it means you are taken care of and in a healthy relationship, whereas if you feel like their mother you should run (laughs).

I can unfortunately relate. I had another question that's a little deeper. There's a few songs where you mention almost like, ¨I want you to take my clothes off" and ¨I want you to see me," and maybe like, here's my body. It made me wonder, like there is this thing of being vulnerable with a person and wanting them to see you, but at the same time, it's also the last thing (my body) that I can give you to get you to stay with me.

Dani: Okay so you hit the nail on the head! I have this lyric that´s “kissing on the couch, taking off my shirt, you said that we should stop, I just wanted you to see me¨.

And I'm talking about the same situation in "Comety" where I'm like ¨I stripdown to the bra that I bought just to show it off¨. In both of those situations, it's like, I think he interpreted me taking off my shirt to mean , ¨oh, she wants to sleep with me¨. When really it was that I wanted to feel desired. I have this cute bra on and I just want to be seen as a desirable person and I want to feel that from you.

And as I answer this question I realize that this feeling is something I wrote about in almost all the songs. 

It's the connecting thread, but I find it very relatable.

Exactly. And so those were my attempts at being this sexy thing because generally I don't feel that about myself. In the song Sexy, I'm saying that I need someone to help me see that version of myself and then in Cigarette Rush, it's a similar feeling when I say ¨so I showed you my body cause I thought that's what you wanted¨.

And it's just like you said, it's the last resort. Like, okay, so my jokes aren't working, my mind isn't working. I guess, this (my body) is what you're here for? And kind of assuming that your body is all they want you for.

The most intimate thing for me is sharing all these things with you from my mind, and then it's like sometimes that's not what they want. So it's trying to understand what do you want from me, and what am I willing to share with you?

In a few years, when you look back at this EP, what do you want to feel about it and where do you hope you will be?

I hope I'll be performing live, because I haven't done that in a while. It´s amazing when people come to a show to listen to your musicon their own time and you’re able to see, firsthand, how much they resonate with it. You don't get that feeling when it's via the internet. And so, I feel like that would feel so amazing to be performing live.

And when I look back at the EP, I hope it makes people feel seen. And I hope that vulnerability that I wanted to share is perceived and felt by anyone that feels like me, going through a chapter of their life where they feel lost. It comes in waves and ebbs and flows of like, I feel cool, I feel confident, I feel sexy, I know what I'm doing, and I finally feel like I'm on the right track. And then all of a sudden it's like,¨ wait, I'm no, I'm so lost¨.

I just hope people will enjoy this EP, because for the first time, I feel very, very proud of these songs and am just so excited for the next chapter of songwriting.

I have to congratulate you. Would you ever take another poke at writing in Spanish?

Yeah! Originally, I thought I had to create a whole different project for stuff in Spanish, and now I don't think I need to. I love how writing in Spanish lets me access a whole different character. 

When I’ve tried to write in Spanish lately, I’ve felt like I'm forcing itand I think it just needs to feel natural. I need to have a song where it just feels like this cannot be communicated in any other language but Spanish.

Who are some of your OnesToWatch?

I think my top one is Maya J'an, and her song "New June." Then, Carol Ades, also featured on Off Campus! I love Oklou, she is insane and also Eli. I actually went to school with Eli at NYU and she is the ultimate stage girl.

Listen to Whatever This Is below: