LAUREN DILLEN

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Lauren Dillen is a Toronto-based tattoo artist and musician. As a member of the band Burs, Dillen is one of four musicians cultivating an ecosystem of expansive psych-folk and rock. When it comes to her solo music, Dillen’s approach is simpler. She distills the weighty chaos of being alive into quiet moments using the soft vibrations of an acoustic guitar and her warmly affecting voice. This is the sound of a sunset after a storm.

Her love of music runs deep, tracing back to summer camp nights in her early teens, when she first picked up a guitar and started writing songs. Later, while studying jazz at Humber College, she found kindred spirits in her future Burs bandmates, playing together in a Joni Mitchell ensemble. Since 2019, Dillen has released a handful of songs under her own name and in collaboration with other Toronto-based musicians.

In August 2024, she released her first solo offering via Victory Pool Records, every-woman sore, a breathtaking meditation on kinship and the quiet ways we hold one another up. "I give you my heart every time 'cause I see that your heart looks like mine," she sings. Recorded in her home studio with Burs bandmate Ray Goudy, a series of plucked guitar notes are returned to again and again on every-woman sore, as if mimicking daily affirmations offered by those you are closest to. In Dillen’s own words, “every-woman sore is my reflection on how I’ve treated the women in my life in the past, how they have treated me, and the responsibilities that we carry."

Her latest release, One More Time for the Road, poses a seemingly simple nonetheless unshakable question: "Can the circle ever be broken?" It’s a song for those who will spend their lives longing for someone, unable to keep themselves from turning over the past like river stones. "One more time with the wheel, we drive in circles 'cause that's how it feels," she sings, her subtly stirring voice carrying the ache of nostalgia for something that almost was. Recorded in Calgary at the National Music Centre with Goudy while on tour and done live off the floor in a single take, the song’s raw emotion flowing unfiltered.

A Trojan horse of a song, One More Time for the Road sneaks its weighty emotional core into something deceptively simple. Echoes of artists like Big Thief, Laura Marling, and Haley Heynderickx ripple through her work, but Dillen’s voice remains entirely her own, a thread of light unfurling like tangled vines, reaching for the light.

Label: Victory Pool

Management: Jesse Northey, Sophie McKinnon- Victory Pool

Publicity: Ken Beattie - Killbeat PR