Hours after she lost her home to the fires that tore through Eaton and Los Angeles in early 2025, Empress Of received unexpected wisdom through a song's refrain. She went to her aunt’s house who made her a bowl of chili and started singing a song from Passing Strange: “Music is the freight train in which God travels/ Bang, it does its thing then my soul unravels/ Heals like holy water and fights all my battles.” The lyrics immediately resonated with Empress Of and ultimately served as a lodestar as she worked on her forthcoming album, Dream House: “She was telling me to take my sadness and make art about it,” she says.
The album is, in part, a literal document of the process of rebuilding her home: Empress Of features snippets of audio recorded while flattening the land, checking the soil conditions, pouring concrete, dealing with inspectors, and finally, watching walls come up. The album art captures her walking through the front door for the first time. But Dream House is also a broader meditation on belonging and self-acceptance - how to cultivate it within oneself, how to honor
the people who feel like home.
People often imagine healing as a process of complete reinvention, a former self disintegrating as a new one emerges from the wreckage. But as she worked on Dream House, Empress Of didn’t feel reborn, exactly. Instead, she found herself rediscovering qualities she had always possessed - resilience, imagination - and honoring people she’s known and loved for years with a newfound sense of purpose. “I’ve always felt that a phoenix isn’t born, it's remembered,” she says. “I did not lose myself. As I made this album, I remembered why I make music.” The effervescent, propulsive synth-pop on Dream House is the sound of a woman who has chiseled away at moments of doubt and loneliness to excavate the sublime, insatiable yearning, curiosity, and hope that has always existed within herself.
Empress Of wrote album opener “Wild Storm” years ago as a way of processing heartache. She rediscovered the demo while working on Dream House, and it felt like a message from a younger self. “I was lost in a wild storm/ I’m home” she sings, her shimmery falsetto cascading over swelling strings, bird chirps, and dewy synth as she moves from past confusion to current assuredness. The song serves as an apt reminder that chaos can be a necessary portal towards self-discovery. “SYW” similarly interweaves images of turbulence with a sense of indefatigable optimism: “A natural disaster / after / you treat me like a stranger,” she sings, before the song morphs into a strobing, flirty dance pop track urging a lover to make a move.
Dream House is about dreams big and small, personal and communal. As she made the album,
she prioritized working with people she trusted and loved. Empress Of’s mother has made
regular appearances in her music, but her features on Dream House are more candid here than
ever before. Empress Of pulled audio from videos of her putting the foundation down on their
house, and in clips like “We Have Walls,” you can hear the generators and nail guns in the
background as her mother speaks about the progress they’ve made. Elsewhere, on “Welcome
To The House,” synths glimmer as her mother says, “My dream is about to get true” and then,
cheerily, “Welcome to the house.”
The experience of rebuilding her home reminded Empress Of of her mother’s tenacity, not just in that specific moment of hardship, but as a foundational and enduring influence throughout her childhood. “My mom came to this country from Honduras and worked really hard and adapted,” Empress Of says. “She worked as a nanny and a house cleaner and was able to make her dream house. She taught me that I can make your dreams happen whenever I want. I just need to accept that life is constantly in motion and adjust to what it presents me. That's the thing with this album - As I was making it, I realized that I can still dream.”
In addition to featuring her mother, Empress Of also made sure to work with collaborators who made her feel valued. “I don't want to sit in the back of the room and have someone else make decisions for me,” she says. “When I work with [co-producer Cecile Believe,] I feel a sense of safety that allows me to be open.” Nick Leon and Dev Hynes, who were a producer and a featured vocalist respectively on the project, also feel like family to her. In fact, Hynes was one of the first people she made music with in 2015.
“I use my music as a defense,” Empress Of said in 2018 before the release of her second album. She was describing how making the album allowed her to stand up to everyone from cat callers to former partners to anyone who made her feel inadequate because of her gender. With Dream House, her music is no longer a defense, but a hand extending outwards. “I want to build a dream for you /just the way you did for me” Empress Of sings on the album closer. The process of nurturing and realizing a fulfilling life, of creating your dream home, is never done alone. The great task of our lifetimes is to find and cherish the people who make this work easier, who make it beautiful.
