Dolores Forever

Support from Living Body

“We love a chorus, and the trigger points of pop structures,” says Hannah Wilson, one half of London duo Dolores Forever. “But we also totally get off on the warmth of organic instrumentation, how to wrap that chorus up with depth and darkness.” Wilson and bandmate Julia Fabrin – each with great experience as songwriters for artists including Tove Lo, Bree Runway and Stormzy – make music inspired by big moments and even bigger feelings. They meld their influences into expertly crafted indie pop with serious heart, as encapsulated in their newest single “When I Say So”, a soaring melodic reflection on growing up and breaking with expectations.

Coming from different parts of the world, Hannah from Leeds and Julia from Copenhagen, their paths converged in London where a mutual friend introduced them at a house party. On meeting they immediately made a pact to not work together. It backfired. “We had heard about each other on the songwriting circuit and agreed to not write songs together; to be friends instead.” Rather than getting a session in the diary, they quickly became close friends, going to gigs and discussing shared musical obsessions, so despite their best intentions, Dolores Forever seemed to be inevitable.

2022 was a whirlwind year for the duo, releasing two EPs “Baby Teeth” and “Conversations With Strangers” back to back, playing big stages like Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds festivals and getting radio support from BBC Radio 1 and BBC Introducing. 2023 has seen them complete a first UK tour supporting Australian indie rockers Spacey Jane playing to sold out venues such as The Roundhouse, selling out their own first headline show at London’s Omeara ahead of a busy festival season, and releasing their new EP I Love You But You’re Making Me Sad. “We’re always evolving the sound, looking for ways to keep it interesting. We want to write our next favourite song, otherwise what’s the point?” asks Julia.

By harnessing their experiences – in the music industry and beyond – these two brilliantly talented women are creating anthems for anybody who, like them, feels things intensely. “We’re not broken women,” stresses Hannah. “We’re just fascinated by the viscerality of emotion.” It’s why, she supposes, they were both drawn to songwriting in the first place. “You get to go into a room and within ten minutes somebody’s spilling their guts out to you.”

“When we started the band we were in quite similar places” says Hannah, reflecting on how the past few years have taken them on diverging roads. A global pandemic forced them to develop the band working from their home studios: “Having this creative outlet to dive into probably kept us sane through an otherwise completely insane time”. Last August Julia had a baby, another major shift in their dynamic. “We played Glastonbury while I was pregnant, which is quite a good story to tell him one day,” Julia laughs. Meanwhile, Hannah moved up north part-time and she now splits her time between there and London. The changes that come with growing up affect every friendship – it’s just that most friends aren’t trying to dig into that in the studio together.

“We would never have started this band before we did – we needed the life experiences to write these songs. But we probably wouldn’t have started the band if we met each other where we’re at now either” muses Hannah, “The tension point of human relationships, that’s what makes the songs interesting.”