PREMIERE: Jessye DeSilva Exudes "Punk Rock Joy" and Announces New Album
PREMIERE: Jessye DeSilva's joyfully defiant "Punk Rock Joy" is a preview of her upcoming -- and vital -- album Glitter Up the Dark.
Today, Jessye DeSilva announces the April 3 release of her new album Glitter Up the Dark, a timely conversation on the radical power of queer and trans joy as a means of survival. DeSilva continues to grow into herself as an artist, refining and evolving her sound to include references to her musical past, present, and future. The dynamic new album, produced by Aaron Lee Tasjan, features exciting collaborations from rock, pop, and Americana luminaries such as Butch Walker, LaFemmeBear, and Adia Victoria. Along with the announcement, DeSilva shares the debut single “Punk Rock Joy,” a synth-driven rocker—featuring Butch Walker—about the defiant joy and queerness of the punk movement. It's the anthem we could all use right about now.
When DeSilva first started writing songs for her third album, she could already sense all the changes. It was the summer of 2023, and DeSilva had just released her second album, the roots-Americana statement Renovations, which earned rave mentions in No Depression, Rolling Stone, and The Boot. After identifying for years as non-binary, she was beginning to think of herself as a trans woman. Meanwhile, Tennessee, where DeSilva had decamped to write her next record, had become the latest state to enact a drag ban.
So when DeSilva and Tasjan, her collaborator and producer, decided to base an entire record on exploring the concept of queer joy, they couldn’t have predicted just how important the songs would end up becoming.
The album they conceived is Glitter Up the Dark, an astonishing and nuanced meditation on community, memory, resistance and survival arriving at a necessary and vital time, one where DeSilva’s own identity as a trans woman is being threatened more than ever.
“Aaron and I came up with the idea to write an album that would center the idea of joy, in a broad sense,” says DeSilva. “Specifically, the joy of marginalized communities, queer and trans communities, and how that joy is something really powerful as a tool for resistance but also something we need for survival, and something we need to fiercely protect.”
Centered in a staid electronic beat and shimmering synth fills, DeSilva's defiance stirs the heart and turns up the corners on one's lips. Sure, the song is catchy – that's Tasjan's signature – but there's a fire here that burns long after the song ends.
"Punk Rock Joy" will be available everywhere tomorrow. Pre-save the song here. Glitter in the Dark will be out on April 3rd.
