Doll Spirit Vessel Announces Debut Album 'What Stays'

Doll Spirit Vessel, the indie trio headed by songwriter Kati Malison, announces its debut album What Stays, due out on August 12 via Disposable America.

Mixed by Peter Geiser (Beartooth, Bennett, Chika) and mastered by Brandon Peralta (Flatbush Zombies, Oneohtrix Point Never, Kimbra), the album was self-recorded in a rented cabin in the backcountry of Oregon in 2020. To mark the announcement, the band has shared its first single, a screamable track called "Train Brain Rot" alongside a special, sporty video codirected by Malison and Jon Cox (Sadurn, Mother Moses).

"'Train Brain Rot' is about the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and how little they serve us sometimes. I wrote it as a way to help me let go of beliefs and ideas that once felt pretty central to my identity," explains Malison.

"The concept for the video came out of quarantining with my friend Jon Cox while we both had covid (I gave it to him on his birthday). I wanted to have it visually convey the chaos and contradiction of inner life, what it's like to be inside your own mind, forced to listen to all the thoughts on loop. It was a ton of planning, we even did a tour of all the middle schools in the area to find the perfect track that would be dark enough to make the spotlight look really stark against the background," she continues.

"We shot everything in two nights, for the first one we drove Jon's van onto the track and shot long takes of me running while my friends staged obstacles and threw stuff at me- it was very off-the-cuff and improvised."

BrooklynVegan premiered the video, calling "Train Brain Rot" a "striking, catchy indie rock track."

Doll Spirit Vessel is a band lead by Malison with friends Max Holbrook (Math the Band) and Lewis Brown. The band recorded their debut album at a rented cabin near Crater Lake, Oregon in December 2020, arriving with a car full of borrowed cables and instruments, rounded out by Guitar Center "rentals" and a few choice preamps and microphones. Malison says she wrote the songs as a way of thinking through her detached, spotty recollection of her own past.

As she grew older, she realized how much of her life she could not recall - what she could remember seemed closer in nature to knowledge than to memory, as though she'd read a book about her life, and not lived through every moment. "I would write directly about my relationship to memory," she explains. "But even when I wrote about other things, it was always through that filter."

The result is a sprawling record, drawing influence from a wide range of artists including Angel Olsen, My Bloody Valentine, and Chopin, reminiscent of bands like Hop Along in its dynamic range. The effect of their genre-blending sound is anything but disjointing- it serves to highlight what the songs have in common: Malison's masterful melodies and vivid lyricism, and the exacting, acrobatic voice she wields to bring them together. Despite this being the band's first release, they've become a part of the Northeast DIY scene, performing shows around New England and joining Philly folk outfit Sadurn on a run of spring shows.

Bypassing the booming auction market for antique haunted dolls, Doll Spirit Vessel has arrived in full force; all aboard the train brain rot.

Watch the new music video here:

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