Dearheart

A new face in Seattle’s rock scene, and one whose sound is all over the rock map, Dearheart finds themselves at an interesting crossroads where different genres coexist. Listening to the band’s music, huge influences from emo shine through in the band’s confessional, raw portrayal of hardship and self-reflection, and from the genre’s tendency towards twinkling guitars and slow-burning emotional payoffs, but the songs the band creates feel way fuller and more defined than any one or two genre tags would properly convey. If Dearheart falls under the category of emo revival, their ambitious song structures and layered, busy instrumentation lands them closer to the scene’s experimentalists like The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die than the scene’s more accessible and catchy figures.

Whether it’s the watery guitars splashing away on “Echoes,” the noisy, but climactic rising tension of “Same New Love,” or the driving nature of the lyrically-cutting “Like You Mean It,” each song on Dearheart’s debut EP Temporary Emotions is packed with its own poignant story and illustrious instrumentals. Lead singer and songwriter Steven Denler, who’s also a professional mental health therapist, brings his unique perspective to emo’s usual lyrical brouhaha, accurately and respectfully portraying experiences of depressive episodes and heartbreak in such a way that those dealing with similar issues may find more lyrics to which they can directly relate than usual.

For being such a new act to hit the scene, Dearheart has more going for them in their demos than other bands manage to across their whole discography.

-Northwest Music Scene