Clear View — Weekend Lovers Examine Loss Through Fresh Eyes on “In Your Dreams” Album

Dane Velasquez, Marta DeLeon, and Rick Bailey of Weekend Lovers. Photo – Ed Arnaud

Marta DeLeon views life from a clearer perspective on In Your Dreams.

The Tucson, Arizona, vocalist-bassist examines loss and love through a new lens on Weekend Lovers’ latest album.

“My mom’s passing away was a big deal,” said DeLeon, who fronts the indie-rock trio. “My dad, sister, and I had been estranged these last few years, but we’ve come back together recently. It’s processing a lot of the grief of losing my mom for all of us.”

She tackles that shared grief on “Not Chill,” which explores the need for acceptance and closure.

DeLeon sings, “But you were lucky to have found her at all / It ain’t my peace. Is it all my fault? / I was waiting in a different time / But we don’t feel this, and it’s almost gone / Cuz deep inside we don’t know.”

“The song, ‘Not Chill,’ is about that … and it was hard to finalize the lyrics for it because I wanted it to capture that emotion,” DeLeon said. “The night before I went into the studio, I was still [figuring] out the lyrics. I didn’t want them to be too simple or too repetitive.”

DeLeon features cathartic lyrics and ethereal vocals across nine tracks on In Your Dreams. Weekend Lovers bandmates Dane Velasquez (guitars, keys) and Rick Bailey (drums, percussion) help DeLeon build that sonic world through emotive instrumentation.

“There’s a lot more band collaboration because I started playing with Rick and Dane in mid-2021,” she said. “We had been playing out for two years, and then we went into the studio in 2023 to track the first half of the songs. Then, we tracked the other half in 2024.”

I recently spoke with DeLeon about the inspiration behind the album.

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Dream Theater – Weekend Lovers Creates Psychotropic Realm on Vibrant ‘Baby’ Video

Weekend Lovers delightfully brings the vivid, hallucinogenic dream world of REM sleep to life.

The Tucson, Arizona dream pop-post rock collective unveils a kaleidoscopic collage of masked fashionable friends, trippy desert adventures and vintage landline phones on their latest video for “Baby.”

“I wanted a nonlinear narrative, and the song is told in bites as a tale of emotions. I think our brains also remember things not necessarily in order, and I wanted some of the best visuals I took over the course of some time,” said Marta DeLeon, Weekend Lovers’ vocalist-bassist.

“It’s basically a day in the life of my life in Tucson, and the city is one of the characters too representing the southwest and its beauty. Thrift and dollar store finds and the Halloween section at Target brought the fantasy mood and props to help my cast be funny or interpretive.”

As the video’s director, DeLeon intricately stitched together a series of brief psychedelic vignettes through a Videoleap app on her iPhone. Together, those colorful scenes created the carefree, experimental world depicted in “Baby” along with additional footage from Luke Ralston.

“I carry my iPhone everywhere, so there were more opportunities to shoot things I’d run into daily in my life that might be cool little visuals. Videoleap is a more developed aka Instagram venture with abilities like timing, speed, filters and mixers that allowed me to overlay the double exposure you see,” she said.

“That really helped me pull together all the 2-second to 4-second videos I was strewing together and gave the overall video some seamless pace and movement. I already had some random quirky storyboard images, and I love movies and write lyrics cinematically.”

DeLeon also recruited a fun cast of bandmates and friends to reside within her psychotropic realm. Along with Jungle Jazzy and Laura Eliason, Weekend Lovers’ Brandon Douglas (keys, guitars, backup vocals), Danny Perez (guitar) and Gabriela Lisk (drums, guitars) join DeLeon throughout “Baby.”

“I can’t really say the song wouldn’t soar as well or hit as much without Gaby Lisk or Danny Perez. I wrote the song with this Portishead bassline and vocal phrasing, but Gaby’s hard joyous drum downbeat propelled the opening ‘ooh-ahhs.’ Danny’s guitar is a creepy, crawling beauty, but then his smacking, slinky strumming hits you in the face,” said DeLeon, who’s inspired by shadows and murals in Tucson’s Barrio Viejo neighborhood.

“My engineer Matt Rendon came up with the backup vocals, which give the chorus its tension musically and emotional necessary angst. They were all open to my preconceived ideas with the props or locations. Some moments were just great mistakes.”

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