By now, you probably know Daughter as the band that makes your most complicated emotions sound like slow-burning cinematic poetry. But according to Igor Haefeli, one-third of the long-gestating trio, their new album Stereo Mind Game wasn’t born out of elegant suffering—it was born out of chaos, abandoned versions, and junk mail.
“We wrote about three albums,” he confesses. “Some of the music just didn’t match where we were anymore. So we started over. A few times.”
After 2016’s Not to Disappear, Daughter briefly disappeared. They scored a video game (Before the Storm), took a year-long break, and then promptly hit the wall of the pandemic like everyone else. Add perfectionist tendencies and the usual existential wrestling match that is songwriting, and seven years later, Stereo Mind Game finally emerged. Somehow, it feels like the clearest statement they’ve made.
“We’re always trying to confuse people a little,” Igor laughs, explaining how they process live drums to sound electronic, sequence organic sounds in mechanical ways, and layer vocals recorded through laptop mics over cinematic string arrangements tracked in an abandoned swimming pool. Yes, really.
One of those tracks, “Junk Mail,” was built from literal spam. “Elena chopped up words from junk emails and turned them into lyrics. They ended up meaning a lot to her. It was surreal—but it worked.” Just don’t tell Igor he’s on it. “I sent her a guitar idea recorded into my computer mic. She was like, ‘This is great!’ I was like, ‘No, this is garbage.’ But it’s on the record now.”
And he’s not just in the background. On “Future Lover,” Igor sings a duet with Elena Tonra. Was this a sign of Daughter 2.0? Don’t get carried away. “We just couldn’t figure out the chorus, and I was trying harmonies. Someone said, ‘Actually, that sounds good. Keep it.’”
Thematically, the album is full of ghosts—dead flowers, dried memories, emotional echoes. The album title itself comes from a lyric in “Party,” a nod to the conflicting voices in your head that never shut up but occasionally harmonize. The band’s promotional campaign even involved mailing out actual dried dandelions.
“They’re fixed in time,” Igor explains. “They’re dead, but they look alive. The album is about memory. It felt right.”
Musically, Daughter leans further into atmosphere and less into structure. There are hints of Johnny Greenwood’s Phantom Thread score and the liquidity of trip-hop rhythms, but Igor’s more interested in moods than maps. On “Be On Your Way,” they spent a year trying to get the arrangement to sound simultaneously “epic and intimate.” It does.
Then there’s the constant battle with simplicity. “Pop songs are deceptively hard,” he says. “I tend to throw everything at a song, then strip it back. Simplicity is really, really difficult. You’re always asking, ‘Is this enough?’”
Turns out it is. Stereo Mind Game is complex, delicate, woozy, and oddly comforting. Like a dream you sort of remember, and maybe don’t want to. “We wanted it to feel like a stereo hug,” Igor says. “Like it’s coming from both sides of the head.”
Mission accomplished.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the video below.
