Dillon

Dominique Dillon de Byington is the German songstress known as Dillon. Blending together a subdued palette of electronica, baroque chamber-pop, and limited orchestration, the 23 year-old has crafted a batch of songs that are perfect for being sad in the winter time. With a voice that recalls Joanna Newsome and a style not far removed from Lykke Li, Dillon brings you into her orbit through a slow, steady process of hypnosis.

On stage, she is anchored behind a bunker of keyboards from which she radiates charisma. A torch song that fixates on a lover’s toothbrush might easily be the stuff of slapped-together modern country pop--an “I Put Your Picture Away” for the orally fixated--but in the hands of Dillon, an abandoned Oral-B communicates an entire world collapsed as tidal waves spill in from an ocean of tears. It gets heavy. Meditative and enthralling, Dillon’s voice and words radiate warmth and humanity even as the occasional laser beam zips by in the mix or a track is transformed into a locked techno groove that reminds you of the work of some of her BPitch Control comrades.

Like many of her contemporaries operating in the shadow of Bjork, Dillon is grafting her own personality and perspective to a sound that has been in gestation for a couple decades. You can hear this same process playing out in the music of Sweden’s Fever Ray and Norway’s Hanne Hukkelberg. All three are creating their own individual take on the fractured, plaintive electronic pop that Bjork first brought to the mainstream. Her quirky lyrics let the listener know that, even in a world that is seemingly all doom and gloom, there is still time for robots that hunt crystals, still room for imagining something new and different. Occasionally they can calm like a balm. That’s something.

You should definitely watch part 2 right now.