August 5, 2021

Deb Never | If It’s For Me, Then It’s Damn Well For Us

by Lauren Castro

2 MONCLER 1952 t-shirt and skirt, AMI PARIS pants, and BOTH PARIS shoes. — **2 MONCLER 1952** t-shirt and skirt, **AMI PARIS** pants, and **BOTH PARIS** shoes.

The enigmatic Deb Never tends to stylishly keep things vague. Born and raised in Olympia, Washington, Deb has always loved music and was drawn to the rhythm as a little girl. She taught herself to play guitar when she was 13-years-old by studying a poster on her wall that displayed guitar tabs. Now, she’s releasing her second EP, Where Have All The Flowers Gone?, this summer.

“There’s so many sides to me that I feel like I want to express,” Deb shares, “and so much growth and so much I want to experiment with and I know that I’m capable of. I love not being boxed in… being able to just be like, ‘Yo, I’m gonna do whatever the fuck I want, and I’m gonna kill it.’ That’s my biggest goal. Finding a voice in that way is, to me, most important.”

From how many tattoos she has or if she might dye her hair a new color—queries often found in the comments section of her Instagram—the young artist keeps to herself, whether guided by a self-defense or public image strategy. “I think more recently,” she considers, “I’ve been getting into just writing about really deeply personal experiences, which isn’t going to be on [my upcoming] project as much. A part of me kind of likes that. You can’t figure me out. It protects me a little bit.”

ONITSUKA TIGER coat, BERLUTI shirt, FRY POWERS necklace, and VARON necklace. — **ONITSUKA TIGER** coat, **BERLUTI** shirt, **FRY POWERS** necklace, and **VARON** necklace.

Deb—who will soon be performing in support of Omar Apollo’s Desvelado tour and slowthai’s Hell is Home UK/IE tour for her first performances across the pond—explains how the EP, which manifested in the course of the pandemic, “feels like this overall... theme of observing.” Perhaps Where Have All The Flowers Gone? serves as a metaphor for our sudden, forced stasis? “When I was writing it, I was just thinking about the perspective of what’s going on now… Everything has just stopped, and it’s almost like we forgot to see the beauty in life. It wasn’t until the pandemic and everything happened where everyone realized how much there’s to appreciate.”

Deb Never looks up to the greats like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, and one can’t help but to observe similarities between the two. Timeless and wired in their own way, Deb is unapologetically herself. “It’s like what you put out, you attract,” she affirms. “I want to make whatever is true to me, and then whatever fans that I attract with that, I know they’re real ones, because I stayed true to what I’m making. That’s the most important thing—I’m not making music for you, I’m making music for me. That’s where we connect and relate, and it forms a community.”