The nature of social media in 2025 means that any band or artist can experience a life-changing moment, seemingly out of nowhere. For indie pop duo Daisy The Great, that moment came when their single, “Record Player,” blew up in 2022. Since then, the band have gone on to tour around the United States and abroad, collaborate with acts like AJR, and headline tours, including their current one which will bring them to Vivarium on Wednesday night. It all leads up to “The Rubber Teeth Talk,” the band’s next album, which is due out in June. Ahead of Wednesday’s show and the new record, we had the chance to catch up with singer/songwriters Kelley Dugan and Mina Walker:

OMC: So in advance, welcome to Milwaukee! I had the chance to talk to you guys at Lollapalooza 2022, just as “Record Player” was taking off, which I’m sure felt like a whirlwind. How does it feel to take the next step now, as you’re looking forward to a new record?

Dugan: That's such an interesting question. I feel like, honestly, I don't know if we thought that much. Making a new record about that time, I kind of feel like there was that moment, and we had it. I mean, it definitely worked kind of covertly in our brains, but we had a ton of opportunities to go on tour and open for other artists, and get a chance to play these big shows, which I think that put into us a new sense of wanting to write music that feels really good to be played live. 

Other than that, I feel like we're following what feels really true to the band from the beginning. I think this next record that we're about to put out is a combination of how we’ve grown, and in a lot of ways we have a bigger sound. We're more prepared to play on a big stage and have big dreams for what it could be. We’re returning to the idiosyncrasies and weird stuff that made us, you know? So I think in a lot of ways we're like coming back to ourselves. 

OMC: “Ballerina” is out now and sounds amazing. I think that it has more angst to it. Like you said, a bigger sound. How soon did you know you had that song and say to each other “okay, this is the one”?

Walker: “Ballerina” is an interesting song because we wrote it before we wrote all the other songs on the album. It was right before our headlining tour in 2023. We had a little bit of time and we were really excited about the idea of playing it live. We actually played it live to work it out and figure out what it felt like on that tour. We kept recording it and we kept being like, “it's not right yet.” Then we wrote a whole album and we kind of figured out how to record “Ballerina” in the context of the album, because it felt so good to play live. After every show, people would be like, “I need that song.” So in a lot of ways I feel like it had to be the first single off of this album because we have been playing it for so long and have been so excited about it. I’m glad that we waited and recorded it kind of within the context of the album because it feels really good now.

OMC: Do you listen back to that initial recording of it? I’m sure you can probably track the growth of that.

Dugan: The initial one sounds like it captures like a spirit. It definitely captures the excitement of writing the song and the excitement of planning the song, but I think that it has found its zone in the music.

OMC: How long goes into the rest of the record then? What kind of timeframe are we looking at for recording?

Dugan: We wrote “Ballerina” around May of 2023. So basically right after that we started writing, but then we went in the fall on a European tour, so we wrote a big chunk of songs during that summer. Then we ended up meeting (producer) Tony Visconti, and when we got back from the European tour, we started to collaborate with him, and so we had sort of a side project moment where we wrote a bunch more songs with Tony. Then we put that out afterwards. So it was a ball of things happening, where I don't remember any years, but we put that up, and we wrote the songs and went through the demo process. We had kind of an original demo, then we made a better demo with our bandmates, and then we started working on recording the record in fall of 2024 like right on the heels of the Tony EP coming out. Around that time we were recording properly, recording the album.

OMC: Okay, so a lot happening at once all of the time. That seems to be kind of the theme here.

Walker: The way I think of the album, it took about a year for us to write and record a bunch of demos for, and then we rerecorded it when we partnered up with Catherine (Marks, the producer of “The Rubber Teeth Talk”)

OMC: Between touring, writing, putting out a side EP thing on top of it, do you think all those experiences fed into the new album?

Dugan: One thing that I was thinking about is that our process of writing with Tony Visconti was really quick. The period between like writing it, committing to that, recording the song and then putting it out was really quick, which was super exciting and really reminded us of like what writing music felt like early on. When there was less preparation about everything and it was easier to just write something and put it out and just see what happens. So I think that really felt like a super creative time, and we definitely brought that into our recording process and finishing up the demos and recording the album. I feel like we had a really collaborative spirit and a really creative feeling in the recording process that I feel like was influenced by having just done a writing session with Tony before that.

Walker: I think I like writing over like a long period of time, because the song can live a little bit and you can let it be. I feel like there's a point when you write a song, you're like, “this is how the song has to be,” and then over time you let it live a little and then you're like, “it could actually be a little bit like this.” That was really fun with these songs, to figure out which kind of go together and like “how do we order it?” Because we are very eclectic writers and we write songs that have really big sounds and really small sounds and stuff. So to have that mix helped.

OMC: So you're playing here in Milwaukee, and it'll be well before the record comes out. How much of the new record do you think is going to land in the setlist and and should fans get excited for a preview of what's to come?

Dugan: You should. It's an interesting time for us because we're between a few moments. So this feels really exciting and in the way that we're able to kind of pull from different albums and different projects and put a setlist together from the collection of our music across our whole career. So yeah, we're going to be playing some songs from the Tony record, some songs from our last main record, and then some other oldies, but definitely some new songs.

Walker: We're really excited to show people what we’ve been working on, but we want it to be reflective of our whole career. It's impossible to be completely reflective of our whole discography, but my dream is to play every song we've ever put out. In order. But I don’t think we’ll be doing that (laughs)

You can catch Daisy The Great on Wednesday night at Vivarium. Tickets are available now via the Pabst Theater Group website.