zzzahara

Zzzahara’s latest album came to them in a dream. Despite being born and raised in Los Angeles, Zahara had never really gotten into David Lynch. When he died at the start of 2025, they dove into his archive of films and interviews. “He's so weird,” they laugh. “Always talking about how ‘everything's a dream!’ And you know what? At that moment, I couldn’t remember the last time I dreamed. I thought, that’s fucked up. So I started taking magnesium and shit, trying to see what it was like to dream again.”

The ensuing dreams were heavy and strange. In one of them, Zzzahara was a teenager, drifting through space and telling their brother, who passed away when they were 12, about their life. “He was asking, like, do you remember me? It really fucked me up.”

Their fourth album Distant Lands was born from the idea of communing with their brother; “talking to him about all aspects of my life across a long period of time.” The name comes from the sense that they exist, now, in different worlds – touching from a distance, as Ian Curtis would have it. It also references disconnected headspace Zzzahara was in when they were taking opiates in their early-twenties. “I would often feel like I was off in a different world, a dream world, blacked out and trying to connect to something that's not there.”

Until now, the lyrical side of Zzzahara’s songwriting has been driven by their love life. Distant Lands is a departure from all that. The dream about their brother prompted Zzzahara both to dig deeper and zoom out; sit with some old wounds and write songs outside their comfort zone of sex and romance. Rather than focusing on the turbulence of their recent love life, they took influence from long-standing feelings around their family life and experiences with opioid addiction. “I feel like I've lived a life filled with lust, having all these rendezvous everywhere – which is really fun, but it can’t be fun forever. I'm a fucked up person on the inside, from all the stuff I've been through, so why not write about that? I wanted to make something that was personal and authentic… and not about chicks,” they laugh. “It's kind of a record about growing up, in a non-traditional sense.”

Over the last few years, Zzzahara has spent more time immersed in other people’s fictional worlds, rather than stewing in their own feelings. Their ravenous consumption of movies and books began to shape their songwriting back on Spiral Your Way Out, with headstrong authors like Charles Bukowski and Joan Didion informing the album’s re-assertion of agency in the aftermath of a relationship that made them feel compelled to try to become someone else. Distant Lands takes more inspiration from Wong Kar Wai movies – their flawed characters and terminal state of yearning – as well as works of literature that embrace the uncertain and follow the logic that many conflicting things can be true at once (Milan Kundera has made a significant appearance in their reading list). This self-administered cultural education is something they feel has given them a healthy sense of perspective that has led to more stability, without sacrificing their natural wild streak as captured on Spiral Your Way Out. “With this record I thought, what can I say about my life that’s authentic to me without having to be ‘woe is me’? So that’s how I wrote the songs this time. Let me tell it like the facts,” they say. “My whole life, I've always been so fucking sad, and at some point you get addicted to the sadness. And then you get addicted to people treating you like shit. And then you get addicted to the feeling of hurting, you know?. Now I’ve reached a place where I'm like, nah, dude. I think I'd rather not.”

Staking a flag in the ground for living truthfully – and that not necessarily meaning perfectly – Distant Lands is laced with the stoic acceptance of life’s currents, positive and negative. There’s no bullshit to be found here – no solipsism, and certainly no regrets. “As long as you’re young and you still have energy then you should do things you love, because you never know,” they say. “You gotta just put your whip to the sky and fucking crack it.”

Releases 7th August, 2026