Manchester-born singer Daniella Lubasu, aka DellaXOZ, inaugurates a new chapter of her artistry today with the release of her new EP, “DELLAIRIUM.” A powerful young voice rising in British grounds (and a TikTok sensation!), the project is already her second musical offering, following her debut EP from 2022, “THE DELLA VARIANT,” self-produced on GarageBand while Daniella was finishing her A-levels, with her siblings enlisted for backing vocals, and final mixing from Nathan Boddy (Nilüfer Yanya, PinkPantheress, Celeste).

Now, at 19 years old, she’s spreading her wings for longer flights. “DELLAIRIUM” is her first work available on vinyl and reflects an important shift in DellaXOZ’s process, as her first collection of tracks to be created collaboratively in a studio, working with Mack Jamieson (Clavish, Wallice, Mahalia), Alexander Headford (Jadu Heart), DRIIA, and Jessie Munro.

Here, Daniella — and her co-producers, DRIIA and HOOST — take Wonderland behind the scenes of her creative process, reviewing her 6-track project track by track, reflecting on the paths that led her to creating her unique glitchy alt-pop, indie-rock fusion, which now defines DellaXOZ’s sound. Keep scrolling…

Listen to the EP…

“come again”
This was the first song I made outside of my bedroom with another producer, Alex Headford from Jadu Heart, a band I really love. This song like a lot of the others on the EP came together really fast, was born from jamming and throwing together an instrumental and me writing over it. A lot of my fans on TikTok refer to it as “the delulu song”, as it describes the common teenage experience of being breadcrumbed in a situationship and deluding yourself into thinking your feelings are reciprocated when you evidently just have a one sided crush.

“fast death”
It describes the destructive nature of staying in situationships/relationships that cause nothing but misery and sadness out of a delusional hope that things will get better, and developing potentially harmful habits to cope.

DRIIA: “I remember fast death came together so quickly. Della picked up the guitar and then the bass, whilst I programmed the drums and fleshed out some pads. We both loved the nostalgic floaty feeling the track had and Della complimented it beautifully with the topline.”

“don’t do it!” & “BORING”
I made both these songs with producer Mack Jamieson, and I love how different they both are because it shows how weird and versatile I want my discography to be. for ‘don’t do it !’ I was inspired by spoken word and was focused on writing poetry so we kept the beat pretty simple whereas for ‘BORING’ I went in with the goal to make something as big and crazy sounding as possible.

“don’t do it!”
This is a mixture of a spoken word poem describing the difficulty of recovering from heartbreak, but also an anthem chanting “DON’T DO IT” as a reminder to not relapse back into old habits and go back to a relationship that was emotionally harmful just out of familiarity.

“BORING”
BORING is the flip side of fast death, as it celebrates leaving relationships that have no emotional benefit and ending repetitive cycles of heartbreak as they’re ultimately just boring.

“DELIRIUM”
After taking a little hiatus from solo production, I made the demo for DELIRIUM for fun but I ended up really liking it and took it to one of my singer/songwriter producer friends DRIIA who I made fast death and we finished both songs in the same day.

DRIIA: “DELIRIUM was sent to me as a demo which Della had made, and I absolutely loved the creativity and chaos of it. To add to the delirium, I beefed up the 808s and made the breaks extra crispy and intense. When we got round to re-recording the vocal, I messed with some fuzz and distortion to get that crushed claustrophobic sound.”

“it’s all good, kid”
I was in a session with Hoost and as soon as I wrote it, I knew I wanted it to be the closing track of the EP because I like ending projects with a positive message and it’s probably the happiest song I’ve written so far.

HOOST: “We wrote this song in August last year. The weather was so perfect, and I really wanted to reflect the sunny mood in the song. I started whistling the intro melody over some simple chords and everything started flowing really quickly. Della ended up basically writing the whole song in about an hour whilst we vibed out different chord progressions and moods. I really love how naturally and easily the song came together, and I think the song feels effortless as a whole, too.”