I was waiting for the bus, leaning against a tree with my skateboard propped up behind me. I’d turned on my headphones and pulled up Spotify on my phone, but I wasn’t queuing songs. Instead, I was staring open-mouthed at the new release page.
Sitting on my homescreen was Indigo De Souza’s ‘Heartthrob,’ the lead single to her upcoming album Precipice. An enormous fan of De Souza (I was in her 0.001% of listeners last year… don’t judge me…) I immediately began playing the song on repeat, counting down the days until the rest of the album dropped. When July 25th came around, I gathered all of my friends who vaguely knew of her and forced them into a Precipice listening party.
From the light-hearted butterfly beat in her song ‘Crush’ to the soft, oceanic sound of ‘Be My Love,’ De Souza’s 2025 album Precipice is an emotional compellation that builds on her previous works and continues to blow the minds of her listeners.
Though De Souza has traditionally written music falling under categories like indie and alternative rock, her most recent album shifts towards pop genres. The new style, however, does not change the raw emotion De Souza ingrains into all of her music.
Through her lyrics, rustic but also melodic singing style, and a pop tune that doesn’t quite follow traditional pop song structure, De Souza’s songs discuss mortality, love, and pushing through struggle.
De Souza’s ‘Heartthrob’ carries themes sexual assault, mental health, empowerment, and pushing through struggle. De Souza has written songs about these topics before, but not all of them have taken on as hopeful a light as ‘Heartthrob.’
De Souza says “‘Heartthrob’ is about harnessing anger, and turning it into something powerful and embodied. It’s about taking back my body and my experience. It’s a big f**k you to the abusers of the world. A sarcastic, angry cry for all bodies that have ever been touched in harmful ways.”
Meanwhile, ‘Not Afraid’ balances the hardships of living with the existentialism of mortality. De Souza sings “I’m not afraid of dyin’ anymore / I’m not afraid of livin’ either.” It is a simple line, but one that holds an incredible weight and gives off a sense of peace and closure.
‘Be Like The Water,’ is De Souza’s favorite of the album, at least lyrically. She says that “There’s a lyric in that song that says you can leave if you want to, and you don’t have to say why. It just really felt like I expressed something that I’d been thinking about in my life for a long time, but I expressed it really simply.”
I really enjoyed listening to De Souza’s newest album. Precipice moves power away from painful experiences and onto people’s abilities to overcome them. It took on a much more optimistic and hopeful outlook than some of De Souza’s past music. Of De Souza’s songs, my personal favorite was ‘Not Afraid,’ followed by ‘Pass It By,’ and ‘Heartthrob.’
De Souza is currently on tour, and will be performing in Portland, OR on March 9th. I am excited to see where De Souza’s music will go from here and am thrilled that Precipice is only the beginning of the content I will be hearing from her.
