The FADER's longstanding series GEN F profiles emerging artists to know now.
daine arrives to their interview in Manhattan with a matcha in hand and a long to-do list. There is a lot to juggle during their visit to New York City from Melbourne, Australia — mainly because things are going really well. “I've never been D-list famous before,” they say in a buzzy downtown cafe on a sunny October day. They have a monotone matter of speaking and tend to slouch their shoulders while gazing ahead, their green eyes glinting. “But now we're here."
Earlier in the week, they received an offer to open for a major rising pop star on a run of arena shows next year. It’s an immense opportunity, but it has daine questioning if they want to be the kind of musician who tours that much. They have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome) which give them muscle aches, nerve pain, and chronic fatigue. “I feel like my body is just more fragile than a regular one,” they say.
“I’ve never been D-list famous before.”
The Australian-Filipino pop artist has been releasing music since 2020. First it was emo, then a hyperpop and bubblegum hybrid. It’s clear though that no music they’ve released has resonated with audiences as much as that of their latest album, In Endless Awe & Agony , a record which is playful, personal, and consistently ear wormy. Lead single “PQC” immediately broke through upon its release in July with its school-yard chant sound, reimagined by someone who was trading song files on Discord. It’s also written like a spell, with daine manifesting joy over a twinkly stomp-clap beat: “I'm wrapped in the passion, hopelessly attaching / To this weapon I'm casting.”
That song and its strong run of follow up singles, a viral Triple J performance of Martin Solveig and Dragonette’s “Hello,” and general buzz in the online sleaze pop ecosystem has led to bigger and bigger opportunities for daine, who recently crossed one million monthly listeners on Spotify. “I thought I was going to have a comfortable 100,000 monthlies, and be playing 200-cap rooms the rest of my life,” they say.
At just 23 years old, daine has been through more highs and lows than most musicians in their 30s. They first broke out in 2022 as the hotly-tipped protégé and mentee of Charli xcx. Back then, their was steeped in Auto-Tune and had a pu pu platter approach to genres; In 2024, after releasing a trap-emo album shapeless, their label dropped them. “2024 was the bad crash-out year,” they say. They were broke and felt creatively and professionally rudderless. “99% of me was just like, "I'm done. We're dying this year."
The aspirational glitz and glam of the music industry was a far cry from how they were raised as the child of “super left wing” parents. Their mom works at a nonprofit for migrant women’s health and their father, an academic, recently finished a book on the connection between ecocide and genocide. They were signed at 16 after some early SoundCloud buzz, around the same time they were haunting around emo shows in Melbourne. “I was getting, like, fucked,” they say now, grimly, about that first deal.
“2024 was the bad crash-out year. 99% of me was just like, ‘I’m done. We’re dying this year.’”
A personal and musical breakthrough happened in 2025. They were living in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with their then-boyfriend producer and former Ion Pack podcaster Curtis Pawley. Pawley and daine had met years ago at a fashion week party before they began “talking” in 2024. “I was like in this huge rut and [Curtis] was like, ‘Babe, let's go into the studio.’” daine remembers being reluctant, thinking it was “unsexy to work in front of somebody.” Maybe it was the nerves, maybe it was the magic of love, but together, that day, they created “PQC.” In a bit of a meta moment, its chorus that buoyantly goes “it happens like magic” also accurately described how the song came together: “Instantly. [In] two seconds,” they say.
Afterward, daine moved back to be with their family in Melbourne, where they crafted demos for what would become Endless Awe, an album, which shows off daine’s vulnerability and a newfound whimsy.
Across its 11 songs, daine hop scotches between pouty diarism over sly synth pop (“Silly Little Animal / Go!”) and distorted rock anthems ("Product of Profit (P.O.P.)”). After creating its demos in Melbourne, they flew to Los Angeles where they finished the album with producer Darcy Baylis, longtime internet friend artsartsarts, and Pawley, who became the album’s executive producer.
On the record, daine sings with a casualness that reminds me of Superorganism's Orono Noguchi or even Kimiya Dawson. They attribute the rawness and immediacy of their vocal style to working with Pawley, who pushed for no Auto-Tune.
“Dating might have been what saved and made this record, because I don’t know if I would have trusted [anyone else] to make that call. He was right." Although Pawley and daine broke up right after making the album, daine, ever the believer in fate, thinks they were “brought together to make the album.”
A week before our interview, daine came out to a rainy stage at Niteharts Festival in San Diego to a packed out crowd that lost their mind as they performed their viral “Hello” cover. It felt like yet another confirmation that daine had actually made it. For daine, however, the highlight was when fellow popstar (and Filipina) underscores joined them onstage to proudly wave the Filipino flag together.
“Filipinos are extremely pure of heart, but also extremely tenacious,” daine says, looking off into the distance. “I feel like my mom and my grandma have made me very un-killable. I'm like a cockroach. A music industry cockroach. You for real cannot kill me.”
