DeeDee Fountain

Category: Artist Diary

First-person notes from DeeDee Fountain on returning to music, recording, and the work in progress.

  • Hi. I Know — I’ve Been Quiet.

    Hi. I know — I’ve been quiet.

    Not gone. Just quiet, at least when it comes to music.

    I never really stopped performing or creating. I wandered into other spaces, other platforms, other ways of expressing myself. Life changed. I changed. And somewhere along the way, music stopped being the place where you heard from me the most.

    But lately, I’ve felt myself being pulled back to it.

    We’re living through a strange moment. AI is everywhere, technology is moving faster than most of us can process, and sometimes it feels like creativity itself is being treated as something that can simply be generated, optimized, replaced, or mass-produced.

    I don’t believe that.

    Technology can do incredible things. But it can’t live a life for you. It can’t carry your memories. It can’t know what it felt like to lose someone, fall in love, fuck something up, survive something you thought would break you, or wake up years later and realize you still have something to say.

    That’s where art comes from.

    And I still have something to say.

    So I’m working on my comeback and, more importantly, a new album. I’m putting together a few ways for anyone who wants to be part of it to support what I’m building. Every contribution helps — truly. Studio time, production, visuals, musicians, equipment, releases… all those little pieces eventually become the thing you hear and see.

    I also know money is tight for a lot of people right now. The world feels chaotic enough without somebody on the internet pretending otherwise. So support doesn’t only mean money. Share the music. Share a link. Tell somebody about the project. Come along for the ride. Support an artist friend whose work means something to you.

    It all matters.

    Maybe this is actually the perfect time to make something.

    When the world becomes difficult to understand, artists have always helped tell the story of what it felt like to be here. Sometimes a song says the thing we couldn’t find the words for ourselves. Sometimes it’s a photograph, a painting, a film, a performance — something another human being made because they needed to get a feeling out of their body and into the world.

    I want to do that again.

    So join me. Let’s see what we can cook up together.

    I don’t know exactly where this next chapter will take us yet, and I think that’s part of what excites me about it.

    I just hope that when you finally hear what I’ve been working on, some piece of it finds you exactly when you need it.

    Thank you for still being here.

    D. Fountain
    Stay tuned. We’re just getting started.

    Support the Comeback

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  • What the Comeback Looks Like From Here

    I’ve been asked a version of this question a lot since I started posting again: what does the comeback look like?

    The truthful answer is that I’m still inside it, which makes it hard to describe from the outside. But I’ll try.

    The comeback looks like sitting in front of a recording setup at 11pm and not hating what I hear. That sounds small, but it’s not. For a long time I couldn’t listen to my own voice without immediately cataloguing everything wrong with it. Somewhere in the process of being away and coming back, I lost that particular reflex. I can hear myself now without the editorial layer of self-criticism. It’s the most useful thing that’s happened to me musically.

    The comeback looks like being present on social media without performing presence. I post things because I want to connect, not because I’m building something that requires me to pretend I already have it figured out. When I was younger and recording as The Davis Fountain, I spent a lot of energy trying to look certain. The music is more interesting when I’m not.

    The comeback looks like reintroducing myself as DeeDee Fountain — which is my name, not a rebrand. Just the version of the name that fits who I actually am now. Davis was how I moved through the world for a long time. DeeDee is who I’ve always been.

    There is new music coming. I’m in the writing and recording phase, which is the part that takes the longest because I won’t let something out until it’s exactly what I heard in my head. Can’t Wait Until Dark is still out there, still streaming, and if you haven’t heard it, that’s the place to start — it’s the first chapter, and everything I’m making now is in conversation with it.

    What does the comeback look like from here? It looks like this. Showing up. Making the thing. Trusting that the right ears will find it.

    Thank you for being one of them.

  • Eight Years in Berlin

    Eight Years in Berlin

    I went to Berlin because I needed to not be here anymore.

    The album — Can’t Wait Until Dark, 2008 through 2010 — broke something in me. Not the music itself. The music I still believe in. But the experience of making it was something else. Too many hands in the pot. Not enough trust in my vision. People who were supposed to be on my side making decisions I never agreed to, redirecting things I was supposed to be steering. I got used. I got exploited. I lost the thread of what I was even trying to make somewhere in the middle of it.

    And this was 2008 to 2010. There was no Spotify. No Apple Music. I had Bandcamp. That was it. You put something out and it found people or it didn’t, and you didn’t always know which.

    The record found some people. But I didn’t feel it that way at the time. What I felt was tired. Like I had handed something precious over to the wrong people and gotten it back in pieces.

    My relationship with music ended after that. Not publicly — I didn’t announce anything. I just stopped. And then I left.

    Berlin wasn’t a creative retreat. I want to be clear about that, because the way people talk about “going to Berlin” makes it sound intentional, like I had a plan. I didn’t. I had a fresh start and not much else. There were good moments — little glimmers, genuinely — but I wasn’t there to make music. I was there to get some distance from what making music had cost me.

    I stayed close to eight years.

    Coming back to Los Angeles, coming back to music — that wasn’t inevitable. I had to decide it. And deciding it meant being honest about what happened the first time, not just the version that sounds good in a press kit. That’s the whole story.

  • In the Studio Right Now

    People keep asking when new music is coming. Here’s the honest answer: I’m in it right now.

    Not “in the studio” like a press release. I mean actually in it — headphones on too long, humming the same four bars until they stop sounding like words, deleting a vocal take at 1am because it was technically fine and emotionally nothing.

    Can’t Wait Until Dark happened a long time ago, under a different name, in a different life. I already know how to make a record. What I’m relearning is how to make one as the person I am now, instead of the person I spent years pretending not to be.

    Some days that’s easy. Some days it’s just me and a blinking cursor and a song that refuses to finish itself.

    No dates yet. No big announcement. Just this: I’m working. It’s real. It’s happening slower than I’d like and faster than it feels some nights.

    I’ll tell you when there’s something to hear.

  • What a Year

    January 29, 2026.

    What a year.

    And yes, I know we’re only 29 days into it.

    My laptop is kaput. It’s blistering cold here in New Jersey. I’m overwhelmed, slightly annoyed, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.

    So things are going great.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about where I want to go next. Not metaphorically. I mean literally where the hell do I want to live?

    I want to leave the East Coast.

    I want to go back to the West Coast.

    Then part of me wants to pack my shit and go back to Europe.

    Ask me tomorrow and you’ll probably get another answer.

    I just know I don’t want to feel stuck anymore.

    More than anything, I think I want to feel safe and sound somewhere. That’s such a simple thing to say, but lately it feels like a luxury. I want a place where I can breathe, make things, work, have some stability and maybe not freeze my ass off every time I walk outside.

    I don’t have some profound January lesson to share.

    I don’t know where I’m going.

    I don’t know exactly how I’m going to get there.

    My computer decided this was apparently an excellent time to die.

    Money needs to be made.

    Things need to be figured out.

    And I’m tired.

    But I’m still here.

    That’s something.

    I think I’ve spent a lot of my life waiting until I knew exactly what I was doing before I allowed myself to move. Maybe 2026 is going to require something different from me.

    Maybe I just coast for a little while.

    Work.

    Save.

    Create when I can.

    Figure one thing out, then the next thing, and hopefully eventually look up and realize I’ve gotten myself somewhere.

    Will I know what I’m doing by then?

    Probably not.

    I’ve made it this far without completely knowing what I’m doing, so apparently there’s some precedent.

    I hope 2026 is good to me.

    I really do.

    I hope I find my way back West, or back to Europe, or somewhere I haven’t even thought of yet. I hope I make music. I hope I get myself into a better position. I hope some of the things I’ve been working toward finally start working out.

    And if this isn’t my year?

    Who knows.

    Ask me in December.

    For right now, I’m cold, my laptop is dead, I’m overwhelmed, and I’m still trying.

    And despite all of that, I’m grateful to be alive.

    That’s enough for January.