RELATABLE

March 30, 2025

Darcie Haven

DARCIE HAVEN
‘HOUNDS’

‘Hounds’, the latest single from rising star of Australian contemporary music, Darcie Haven, is both a confident step forward and a reminder of everything that is so good about the artist and her music. ‘Hounds’ is slick and worldly — produced for mass global appeal — and yet so homespun that, once you get to know Haven a little bit, you understand that only this particular young woman from Condingup could have written it.

It means they will stick around for ever

Starting out as a breathy singer-songwriter oeuvre, ‘Hounds’ transforms into a heavenly slice of dream pop in the key of transcendence. The track is so deftly understated that you initially feel its warmth and lyrical wit without realising why, each successive listen revealing one more succulent layer. And with lines like, A shiny new thing is cute / Until it gets old, Haven consistently hits the heartstrings of her adolescent, mostly female, market while leaving enough meat on the bone for even an old chook like me. You can’t help but marvel at the targeted naïveté of Haven’s lyrics on ‘Hounds’; the song provides a template that, in years to come, emerging artists will cite as one of their influences.

Just as Haven does with hers.

“I remember exactly where I was when I heard Taylor Swift for the first time,” said Haven when asked about her evolution as a songwriter. “Mum bought the Fearless CD and was playing it in our lounge room, and I remember I walked into my bedroom thinking, ‘What is that?’ and it literally changed my life, hearing a young woman sing about her emotions like that. From there, I discovered Missy Higgins and then — my family is a big country music family — Kasey Chambers, Beccy Cole and artists like that as well.

“I don’t think I would even have known to start writing songs if it wasn’t for those sorts of women. I wouldn’t have known it was even an art form.”

Raised on a farm near Condingup about an hour east of Esperance in the southeast of Western Australia, Haven’s childhood was as remote and idyllic as you could possibly imagine.

“I love it so much down there,” said Haven. “I can’t imagine having grown up in a city. To have that much space to grow up in and to be yourself and just the physical nature of growing up on a farm, having so many corners you can run to and create things without anybody hearing. I started writing songs out in the corner of a paddock where nobody could hear me. That probably bred the type of songwriting that I do now.”

That sense of space and freedom informs the airiness of ‘Hounds’, its to-the-sky and back changes of gears and sense of boundlessness within the safety of the known. Squint just a little bit and you can see the open paddocks sweeping down to rocky shores, embroidered with dazzling white sand, that capture the azure of the Southern Ocean in bay after bay, but never manage to quell its energy.

This is the country where Haven served her songwriting apprenticeship so it’s no surprise that, along with her musical heroes, it seeps into her songwriting.

“I’ve been writing songs since I was eleven,” said Haven. “I’d written hundreds of songs before I released my first single (‘I Wanna Be’, 2022). I started out writing country, because that was my influence, and then tried writing pop and then in high school I started doing more indie stuff. Songwriting was a skill that I was honing over many years that I wasn’t even trying to hone. It was something that I did to try to process my emotions. Whenever I was sad, or confused, or hurt, or happy, it was a way of journaling for me. I always did that without ever thinking it would be a career path.”

It’s no surprise that, while obviously she had a talent for songwriting from an early age, Haven never yearned for a career in music.

“Out in the country, careers are you’re either a nurse, or a teacher, or a farm wife,” Haven said, “so just being shown that that’s something you can do and that you can make money off your art, it seemed very far away from me and I never thought I’d be able to do it.”

In part we have the likes of Swift and Higgins, Chambers and Cole to thank for Haven’s emergence as a songwriter and then performer. When reflecting on their influence, Haven was moved to say, “Just having that as a possibility, those role models, I wouldn’t even have started writing if it wasn’t for them.”

But they’re not the only ones. Family had a big say in Haven’s emergence as the artist she is today.

“It was really tricky,” said Haven, “songwriting has always been personal to me. I didn’t tell anybody I was writing songs all through school. I was very secretive about it. I never even told my Mum. When I wanted to put out a song it was confusing for a lot of people, it seemed like it came from nowhere. I was really academic at school and I got a scholarship to university to do law. I was on a very straight and narrow path, so to change to do music was a big choice and it was a really scary choice. My family are so supportive, unbelievably supportive, but it didn’t make it any less scary.”

Since her first single, ‘I Wanna Be’, blew up thanks to being featured on Triple J, life has changed quite considerably for Haven. That first outing resulted in Haven signing up with management and, in more recent times, making the move to Melbourne, which is now her working base.

“I’ve just moved [to Melbourne],” Haven said, “but I’m keeping both feet in both states. I’m going home a lot and switching between the two. I do all my recording here, but it’s good to have a base in both.”

You have to wonder how long that duality will last, given the demands of the music industry, but if anyone can stay grounded, it’s Haven. Asked what was next for her, Haven answered with her signature openness.

“Putting my energy towards my fanbase is my priority, not only with this release, but with my entire career. That’s all I want to worry about. I don’t want to worry about radio or Spotify, I just want to worry about the young girls who are listening to my music and communicate with them, make stuff for them.

“I find the most valuable thing is to respond, always reply. That is when people really feel a connection with you. You should treat everybody personally and try to remember names. If someone is popping up constantly in your DMs or comments, go out of your way to look at their profile and learn their name, because then you’ll see them at a show and you’ll be able to speak to them by name and they will be so excited.

“It means they will stick around for ever.”

As an artist, Darcie Haven is a phenomenal success story. You only have to speak with her for a little while to know that her success comes from her ability to communicate and her genuine desire to reach people. That’s what makes Haven the phenomenon she is and what makes her music so enduringly relatable and attractive to a generation of kids that will have the life-affirming pleasure of growing up with her.

“What’s so amazing is that, especially with female artists, longevity seems to be a lot greater than it used to be,” Haven said. “I know now that I can create music in my 30s and 40s and beyond, and I feel really confident that my fanbase will grow with me and grow older with me.”