Doe Paoro – The Language of Past Lives
Singer, songwriter, and sound healer Doe Paoro (also known as Sonia Kreitzer) returns with her first full-length album in seven years, Living Through Collapse, out September 19.
Today, she shared the luminous new single + video “The Language of Past Lives.”
“The Language of Past Lives” is a heavy-hearted but luminous reflection on Kreitzer’s miscarriage, adorning the gorgeously aching track with tender harmonies and lush guitar work. “This is a song directly speaking to my experience and to the mystery of both birth and dying,” Kreitzer expands. “So often with miscarriage, and as was the case with mine, there is not a clear explanation for why it happens and so closure can’t always be found from answers, but from making peace with the greater mystery.” She continues, “In the past I’ve written very personal songs on topics we tend to speak about more openly in our culture, like limerence and loss of love. For reasons I could speculate on, we don’t give much space to miscarriage, and it felt meaningful to find a voice for that experience.”
The accompanying video showcases a live rendition of “The Language of Past Lives,” filmed on the Tapantí River in Costa Rica, with Kreitzer accompanied by guitarist Amor Reluciente.
The album artwork for Living Through Collapse was created by multi-media artist Elena Stonaker. On the collaboration, Kreitzer says, “The artwork is a collage from a painting that Elena Stonaker made for the cover art for the full length record. I have been working with Tsto studio in Finland to build up a visual language by remixing her painting in different forms for the single artwork, a language that centers animism and the mystery.”
Over the course of her kaleidoscopic career, Doe Paoro has made her music into a vessel for transformation of all kinds: catharsis, awakening, the deliberate shedding of old patterns and worn-out beliefs. In creating her new album Living Through Collapse, the Costa Rica-based singer-songwriter embraced an even deeper intentionality and dreamed up a body of work aimed at catalyzing collective healing — an undertaking informed by her longtime experience in apprenticing with practitioners of shamanic plant medicine in the Peruvian jungle, as well as her work in leading sound baths and guided meditations.
“In recent years, I’ve been consumed by an awareness of how the world seems to be in collapse—not just the environment, but also the intertwined systems and legacies of power, colonialism, capitalism, racism, and structural inequity, all driving us toward unsustainable and life-denying futures,” she says. “This album came from asking myself how we show up for that collapse, and how music can hold space for repair as well as the birthing of new possibilities.”
Her most unbridled and expansive output to date, the project ultimately serves as both sanctuary and sustenance, providing the clarity of mind and radiance of spirit needed to navigate an increasingly precarious world.
“This is a record about grief, repair and possibility,” Paoro says. “It’s about the karmic responsibility of being born, and a call to action to fight for the sacred life of what is not yet born.” She continues, “It’s a sobering look of the unsustainability of where we are as a human and more-than-human family with our intersecting injustices and inequalities, wars, ecocide, and empirical collapses, and it’s an ask that we don’t give up but join in the prayer and action of working towards collective liberation for all. This is a record that holds space for duality, paradox, contradiction and transcending all of it. I hope it will serve as a salve, guide and space holder for the times that are coming.”
The first full-length from Doe Paoro since 2018’s Soft Power (a soul-leaning LP produced by Amy Winehouse collaborator Jimmy Hogarth), Living Through Collapse marks the latest entry in a sonically adventurous catalog that also includes 2015’s After (a moody convergence of R&B and synth-pop, made with members of Bon Iver’s creative circle). This time around, she assembled an eclectic mix of producers including Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), Chris Sholar (Esperanza Spalding, Solange), Lagartijeando (an Argentinian luminary known for inventively merging Latin folk and electronic music), and Liam Fletcher (a UK-based musician whose credits include Swiss singer/songwriter Danit). Co-produced by Devin Gati (who also helmed production on Doe Paoro’s 2022 EP Divine Surrendering) and partly recorded in Costa Rica with a lineup of local musicians, Living Through Collapse embodies an earthy yet resplendent sound that perfectly mirrors its globe-spanning origins.
“The way we made this record was very mycelial,” notes Kreitzer, referring to the underground networks of filaments that enable complex communication among ecosystems. “Devin and I started these songs together and then reached out to people all over the world, with the goal of coming up with the best possible offering to meet this moment.”
At the heart of Sonia’s musical expression is an unshakeable belief in the power of music to heal, awaken, and unify consciousness. Her work in the world includes touring internationally, concerts and sound baths, facilitating music in ceremonial spaces, and more.
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