Zzzahara – Distant Lands

Zzzahara's latest album came to them in a dream. Despite being born and raised in Los Angeles, Zzzahara 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 dreams that followed were heavy and strange. In one of them, Zzzaharawas a teenager drifting through space, talking with their brother, who passed away when they were 12. He was asking, like, do you remember me? It really fucked me up. Their fourth album Distant Lands grew from the idea of communing with their brother - talking to him about all aspects of my life across a long period of time. The title reflects the sense that they now exist in different worlds, touching from afar, as well as the disconnected headspace Zzzahara experienced during opioid use in their early twenties. I would often feel like I was in a different world, a dream world, blacked out and trying to connect to something that's not there. Until now, Zzzahara's songwriting has largely centred on their love life. Distant Lands marks a shift. The dream about their brother encouraged them to dig deeper and zoom out, writing beyond their usual themes of sex and romance. Instead, they explored long-standing feelings about family and their experiences with addiction. In recent years Zzzaharahas immersed themselves in other people's fictional worlds rather than stewing in their own feelings.