Some musicians spend years on the hunt for the right bandmates to make something with, but dreamscent managed to skip that step. The Raleigh four-piece came together in 2024, wrote the bulk of their debut over the following summer, and had it recorded by December. For a band that hadn’t even played its first show yet, it’s an impressive amount of conviction that can make waves in a local music scene.
That effort culminated in their superb LP, Burning Days, which was released in April 2026 via Blank Verse Records – yet another testament to the band’s contagious rise. The record’s release has already brought a sold-out show at Rubies on Five Points in Durham and a run of June dates that culminated in dreamscent’s first performances outside the Triangle. With so many amazing artists to look out for in North Carolina, dreamscent is doing everything to make sure you don’t miss them.
What has everyone been listening to lately?
Glo (vocals/bass): Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of this shoegaze band, Softcult. They’re twin siblings. And I’ve been really into the album Time, Time, Time by Yndling lately. Super good.
Timmy (guitar): There’s a band from San Diego called Sparkler, and they just dropped an album [Glidewinder] the same day that Burning Days came out. I’ve been listening to that a lot. They’re shoegaze too. MX LONELY’s ALL MONSTERS is a really good record that came out back in February. There’s also this surf punk band called SERF I’ve been into.
Julian (drums): I’ve been listening to a lot of julie lately.
Jack (vocals/guitar): I’ve been on some ’90s stuff, mostly Hum, Chapterhouse, and some grunge like Stone Temple Pilots. But my latest obsession has been this North Carolina band called Let’s Active from the ’80s. The frontman, Mitch Easter, produced the first couple of R.E.M. albums. I fell down that rabbit hole, and it’s been a fun time.
Who was the first band or musician you remember discovering on your own and just completely obsessing over?
Timmy: Probably Jimi Hendrix and John Frusciante. My dad was a huge Red Hot Chili Peppers fan — he grew up in California — and I was always super into Californication and By the Way. I loved the way Frusciante played, and admiring him as a guitarist, you’re obviously going to end up admiring Hendrix too.
I really gravitated toward how both of them kind of played bass and guitar at the same time, using their thumbs for low notes and playing higher up on the strings. That was my first real introduction to “Ooh, I like this, and that’s what I want to try to do.” My brother was also really into punk and metal, so a lot of ’80s and ’90s American punk, and even some French Oi punk, which got me into power chords and faster playing.
Jack: I think for me it was Guitar Hero that blew open my whole world. I was just like, “Wow, there are so many more bands than I thought there were”, and it just led me on a journey. I actually had a DragonForce CD, which was one of my first CDs.
Julian: The first band that I really got into was KISS. I was super into them as a kid. Then in middle school, I got into Nirvana and more grunge, and it just kept spiraling from there.
Glo: I have such a bad memory for specific bands. I feel like I’ve just listened to so many different things over the years. I think my longest phase was French indie groove, kind of new disco. There’s this band called L’Impératrice, and the bassist in that band is so good. I love that kind of vibe.
What was the origin story for the band coming together?
Jack: In 2024, I moved to Greensboro, and I was turning 27 or 28, and I was like, “Damn, I’ve never really given a real shot to music.” I’d been in fun little groups before, but we didn’t take it seriously. So I started going to open mics and figuring things out, but I couldn’t really find anyone in Greensboro who was as into shoegaze as I was. I was really serious about that specific genre. Eventually, I put out a Craigslist ad, and that’s how I met Timmy.
Timmy: I had been a bedroom guitarist since COVID, and my New Year’s resolution was to learn an album completely by ear. I was working through Greet Death’s, New Hell, about four or five songs in, and I was just getting bored playing alone. I’d had luck on Craigslist before, so instead of making a post, I used the search function and typed in “shoegaze,” “near me,” and “guitarist.” Then I found Jack’s post. It had a “fans of” list with a bunch of bands, including Ty Segall, beyond shoegaze. The listing was about two months old, but I figured I’d try it.
They got back to me a week later, and I said, “Meet me at my hair studio.” So they sent me the first demo, “Photograph”, I learned it, and we met up. As soon as we played, it sounded horrible. Turns out they recorded it a half step down. Once we sorted that out, we played the whole song, and I was like, “Whoa, there’s chemistry here.” It was pretty immediate. Then we got dinner, went to a show that night, and a friendship formed. We just kept writing. Pretty much the whole record got written that summer.
Julian: Timmy and I were in a band before this, and then COVID happened. He hit me up again and was like, “Hey, do you want to go see Kaonashi?” He was trying to rekindle our friendship, showing me some demos. I was so down to play this kind of music, honestly.
Glo: I was the last one to come in. Timmy messaged me and asked if I still played bass. I’d played it on and off growing up and always wanted to be in a band. He actually sent me some demos, and I learned them, came over to his garage, and we all played some of the songs. At the end, they asked if I’d be in the band. I remember there were like two other bassists they were talking to, so I was like, “Oh God, I have to compete.” But it was fine!
Timmy: When Glo left that first practice, Julian and I were talking, and I was like, “I really hope she wants to practice again.”
Image credit: maybemaurion
As you finalized the lineup and went into recording, how did the songs evolve through the lens of the full four-piece?
Timmy: Jack and I each did demos for our main songs. They composed “Photograph”, “Burn Through Me”, and “Wrinkle.” I did “Don’t Mind”, “Red String”, “Lost in a Dream”, and “Moving Forward”. Their demos had a much more analog feel; mine were a little more processed. But those were just the bones.
Once Julian put his drum style into it, Glo laid down her basslines, Jack wrote over my songs, and I wrote leads over Jack’s songs; that’s when they became ours. Before that, it was just “a Timmy song” or “a Jack song.” Then it became a dreamscent song.
Glo: For Jack’s songs, they already had lyrics, and they’re a great writer, so I mostly worked on harmonizing and building on what was there. For some of Timmy’s songs that didn’t have lyrics yet, I’d pitch ideas. “Don’t Mind” was the first one I wrote lyrics for, and it came really fast. My lyric writing process is either in the car or just out of nowhere; I have to write it down immediately. For “Moving Forward,” Timmy actually messaged me at work and asked if I’d rewrite the lyrics. I said I’d see if I had time, and then just sent him everything. He was like, “Whoa.”
Timmy: She sent me all the lyrics, and I was blown away. We had already recorded demos like that, and then having someone else’s musical abilities interjected into your own music. I’d never experienced that before.
What was it like when you were choosing singles to put out ahead of the record?
Glo: We had recorded the whole album by that point.
Jack: Those ended up being my two favorite songs off the album, so I was like, “These need to be out as soon as possible.” We recorded in December, and I hated that you had to release things slowly. I wanted it all out at once.
Glo: Max Gowan at Found After Dark studio also suggested it’d be smart to give people a taste before releasing the whole album. And we also wanted one song where Jack was singing and one where Glo was singing, so people could see that, hey, there are two vocalists in this band.
What are the non-musical influences that bleed into the music, lyrically or thematically?
Timmy: Jack and I are pretty similar in how we approach lyrics. It’s like an introspective thought, a feeling that you almost want to convey as a story.
Glo: For “Red String”, I wrote all the lyrics in one evening after a miscommunication with my husband. That song came from my relationship and the idea that the more you invest in a relationship, the more you have to compromise. I brought in the red string aspect: in Asian culture, there’s the red string of fate. So it’s a lot of symbolism and feeling.
Jack: For me, it’s like if I don’t get this feeling or thought out of me, I’m going to explode. It has to be exactly as I envisioned it. But then once you say it differently, you’re like, “Actually, that’s what I meant the whole time.” “Wrinkle” and “Don’t Mind” are a lot of existentialism. Like, okay, we’re getting old, the world is kind of rough right now, but let’s just pretend we’re in a dream.
How did the connection with Blank Verse Records come about for the physical release?
Timmy: When we played with All Under Heaven at The Pinhook in January, I asked their vocalist how they got on a label. He basically said, “I just sent 30 emails to 30 different labels, and this was the one that fit.” So I made a list of maybe 15 or 20 labels.
I heard about Blank Verse from The Stray Lions. We played a show with them in March at The Poor House and got to talk to them about how Blank Verse had printed tapes for them. So I shot my shot. They got back to us, we had a Zoom call, and Morgan from Blank Verse was just really enthusiastic. He said, “I hear you guys, I hear this vision, I feel like it’ll resonate with a lot of people.” It felt like they were in it not just for the monetary value, but because they genuinely wanted good music on their label. It’s a great fit.
Image credit: maybemaurion
What was it like to hold the finished physical product?
Timmy: We’re not quite there yet. Morgan just messaged me saying the CDs should arrive by Monday or so. But I will say, just seeing pictures of the packaging and the designs blew my mind. I never anticipated being at this level of anything music-related. It really feels like a dream come true.
A friend of ours, Jamie at Southeastern Camera — me and Jack love that store, he does the film development — as soon as he heard about the record, he said, “I’m ordering all three: the vinyl, the tape, the CD.” And today he sent me a video of the CD arriving in the mail. Before us!
Who designed the album artwork?
Timmy: I did the collage for the album. My brother got me into collaging when I was younger, and over the past couple of years, I’ve really developed a love for it. The first two singles used photos that Jack took. For the album art, I had everyone come over to my place for practice, and I set out a bunch of magazines — Rolling Stones, Playboy, National Geographic — and said, “Find stuff that resonates with you.”
Purple is really our color. dreamscent just has that purple, bluish, hazy feeling. That’s what dreams feel like. Cloudy. The background came from a coffee-table book I have on sunsets at North Carolina’s Outer Banks, so there’s a lot of local stuff woven in. If you look closely, you can see a wrinkle in an eye, an eyeball on a TV, and four people standing around it, looking worried. The more you look, the more you find; the photograph, the red string, the setting sun, the burning days.
Jack: The album title even came after the artwork. We were originally just going to call it dreamscent, but we were brainstorming, went through the lyrics, and asked, “What are the themes?” What’s the connective tissue? There was this feeling of life passing you by, of losing something you didn’t expect. That late-twenties feeling of “this isn’t what I expected.” And Burning Days, from the song “Burn Through Me”, just felt right.
Everything about this band seems to have come together really naturally. What has that been like?
Glo: Nothing has ever felt forced. Even the recording process felt very go-with-the-flow. I think it’s easy because these guys are so chill. I was initially nervous. I didn’t know two of these people, but we’ve been able to bond over silly things like rollercoasters, being the youngest sibling in our families, movies, film, and photography.
Now that the record is out, how are y’all looking to support it? Any shows coming up?
Timmy: Honestly, before this interview, we were already working on eight new songs. We’re not stopping. Hopefully recording another single soon, and we’re hoping to do a music video too. We don’t have anything in May, but we have three shows in June. June 27th is a big one, since it’s our first show outside the Triangle.
Glo: Our album release show at Rubie was awesome. We sold the projected number of tickets and even got a bonus because we sold more.
Timmy: Charlotte feels like the natural next step. You play in your local scene, build a following, hit your supply limit, and then take it somewhere new. That’s just the natural progression of a band.
Who are some of your favorite local or North Carolina artists you’d want to shout out?
Timmy: Jupiter 2 for sure.
Glo: I’m friends with Julia and Connor at Applefield. We haven’t played a show with them yet, but we’re planning to.
Jack: Snowblinder, they’re really fun. Exploding the Moments were really good to watch. Empty Room is fantastic. All Under Heaven, Deep Green Ravine is local, and she’s super cool.
Julian: Harm. I love them.
Jack: And of course Wednesday, MJ Lenderman. It’s obligatory, but it doesn’t stop me from saying it. We also have to mention Verity Den; they are so perfect.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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