Denae deeply explores the vivid realities of living in dreamland.

The Detroit indie soul singer-songwriter recounts insightful tales of lucid dreaming on her latest hypnotic single, “Sleep Junkie.”

“For a period of my life, I got into lucid dreaming and traveled in this dream world. I was exploring my sleep life, but it was during a time when my depression was fluctuating,” Denae said. “This was at a low point for me when I was just not having life, and I ended up liking my life better in my sleep and in my dreams.”

Throughout “Sleep Junkie,” Denae becomes immersed in an alternate universe filled with wistful electric guitars, floaty synths, sweeping bass and booming drums. She quickly questions whether her nocturnal adventures are rooted in fantasy or reality.

Denae sings, “Count your fingers/Check to see/Dream or reality?/I left my body at home/Lyin’ between the sheets/Memories distant enough to haunt me/Haunt me.”

“I went through this period where I was working all the time, and anytime I wasn’t working, I was sleeping like 14 hours a day. It created this sense of paranoia when I was awake, and the longer I did it, I was like, ‘Is this a dream?’ I didn’t know sometimes, and I had to snap out of it and get my mental health together,” she said.

“‘Sleep Junkie’ is really a reflection of mental health and that need for escape, but it brings in the sleep element and lucid dreaming because that was my escape at the time. I don’t think many people think it’s based off real events, but it was really was.”

Denae breathed new life into “Sleep Junkie” with Ann Arbor producer Eon Zero. The duo transformed her initial stripped-down version of the track into a soulful, atmospheric rejuvenation.

“Eon did so much, but it was also a collaborative effort where I was picking sounds and instruments. I played the minimal guitar on it, and he played more of the electric guitar on it. It was this cool second generation of collaboration … where we saw the vision together,” said Denae, who’s known Zero since high school.

Denae also brings her “Sleep Junkie” dreams to life in a mystical new video, which eloquently captures her hypnagogic state. Directed and edited by Joe Cavanaugh, it shifts between dreamy shots in a paper-filled attic and a dimly lit swimming pool.

“I had a lot of ideas that surrounded the water and the events in the video. (Joe) found this really cool house in Hamtramck, which was his friend’s house that was gutted. He had this vision in this space, and the set design was us bringing our collaborations together,” she said.

“We also went to a pool of a friend of my parents, and we filmed at night. It got really cold, and it was like 60 degrees in this pool. Joe was shivering, and I was in this dress I couldn’t swim in. We had to have someone swim to the bottom of the pool and bring me up when I would go under for a take because the dress weighed so much.”

Continue reading “Wide Awake – Denae Explores Lucid Dream World on ‘Sleep Junkie’” →