Lorelei K's Dahlia Knowles Wants To See More 'Insane Trans Women' in Music

Dahlia Knowles of Lorelei K finds herself all over the place lately. When we catch up with her on a June afternoon via Zoom, she is staying in Garland with family, gearing up for Lorelei K’s forthcoming album, Gucci Doom. She is also preparing for the band’s new tour, which will begin in August and include all six members of the band — something Knowles says rarely happens.

The album’s title track sets the mood for Knowles and the band’s new era, which has them segueing from the alternative rock sounds of last year’s album Swimming Pool Eternity into what Knowles describes as a “sexy pop sound.”

Over sobering percussion and haunting piano chords, Knowles opens the song: “My body is a museum / Who I am, who I’ve been / Let me give it to you.”

“This song is super autobiographical to me,” says Knowles. “This was one of the first tracks we started working on whenever we started working on the record. We really wanted to go for fashion music and attach some really hot, but also reflective and introspective, lyrics to it as well. And then that set it up for the rest of the record.”

While writing and recording Gucci Doom, Knowles recalls being in various places of her life — living alone, living with a boyfriend and now living with family. But part of the inspiration for the record was being a woman in her mid-20s trying to figure out where she’d land.

“I would probably say that I lived in a different apartment for every fucking song on this record,” she says. “I've been moving around so much all around Dallas and so much change has happened, and that's like really present in the songs.”

The songwriting process for Gucci Doom was rather “collaborative,” Knowles says. For many of the songs, she would write tracks with “drum loops and like really basic, bare chords” via a MIDI, and then take these demos to her band. With them, Knowles would flesh out the rest of each track.

Knowles teases an upcoming song set to be included on Gucci Doom called “Blessing,” which she says was the hardest of the nine tracks to write.

“It was written in a really, really dark place,” says Knowles. “It doesn't have the same structure that a lot of the other songs do. It's me interacting with my drummer, Dean [Adams], and just kind of spitting lyrics. I remember it being cathartic at the time, but the track itself is so complex, but also so minimal, at the same time. I remember having to record and re-record those vocals.”

But this matches the vibe of the previously released “I Want To Be Alone,” a melancholy track that finds Knowles brooding over plucked guitar strings and thundering percussion.

“You pull your hands up over your head / It’s all over now, isn’t it? / You pull your hands up to the sky / Are you alright with saying goodbye?” she sings on the chorus.

But while Knowles sings of transitions and existential dread in the Lorelei K universe, she finds solace in Dallas’ neighborhoods, attending drag performances in Dallas’ Cedar Springs strip. She even entered a drag competition as Lorelei K.

"I think we could see way more LGBTQ+ performers, but I feel like trans women are so underrepresented, across the board.”– Dahlia Knowles

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She’s also been attending shows at Denton’s Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, supporting local artists as she continues to come into her own sound. While the music industry is ever-changing, Knowles says that local venues and live shows will always be essential components of music discovery.

“If you're going the route of trying to pursue Spotify playlist placements and things like that, it's such a fucking rat race at times,” says Knowles. “It's the same thing with getting picked up and having a song on TikTok. That would be really dope if that did happen to us, to get one of our songs discovered in that way. But I do also believe in the power of playing the show, and most people seeing you either for the first time, or fans of you for however long, those people go and listen to you immediately after the show; I can see it in my numbers and my insights.”

As the landscape and the ways fans discover music keep diversifying, Knowles believes there’s still room for improvement, specifically among queer and trans artists. She would love to see more representation of “insane trans women” who craft beautiful music.

“I've met so many trans women that make varying genres of music through being an openly trans performer,” says Knowles, "and I feel like we could see definitely way more of that, across genres. I think we could see way more LGBTQ+ performers, but I feel like trans women are so underrepresented, across the board.”

Beginning in August, Lorelei K will embark on a cross-country tour, which will begin in Los Angeles.

“Every tour feels so epic, even if we're just singing our silly little dream pop songs in dive bars,” says Knowles. “I think I'm most looking forward to finding new fans and finding people that can identify something within themselves within the music that we're making. Because the setlist that we'll be bringing out is going to be really different than anything we've done on tour before.”