Artist of the Week: Dakota East

CountryTown in partnership with iHeartCountry Australia is proud to announce indie pop-country artist Dakota East as our Artist Of The Week.

Dakota grew up in a log cabin on a small island in the middle of Ontario Lake surrounded by music. Her Mum would play B.B King and Bonnie Raitt around the house, and her Dad loved North American folk singers like Neil Young, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell, while Dakota’s music is her nod to modern country crossover influences Kacey Musgraves, Maren Morris and Caylee Hammack.

In 2017, Dakota moved to Melbourne where she established herself as a regular performer amongst Victoria’s most loved music venues and opened for Jon Stevens, Wendy Matthews and Joe Camilleri, and The Black Sorrows.

She recently released her debut single, Runaway. Written with long-time collaborator, guitarist and producer Kieran Colton and mixed by Konstantin Kersting, Dakota sings of the experience of fear.

She says, “After losing my dad when I was 24, I felt a resurgence of anxieties and fears that I thought were just based in childhood. Things that I thought I had grown out of. Fear of flying, fear of the ocean, fear of the dark. Life felt so fragile and at any moment it could break.”

She adds, “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been influenced by so much, but the essence of pure, raw and unrefined musical emotion has always stayed strong within me and is what I try to evoke as an artist.”

Keep up to date with Dakota East on her Facebook page here.

For more Artist Of The Week features, including Dakota East, check out here.

Image: Supplied