Empress Of is entering a deeply personal new chapter with “SYW,” the latest single from her forthcoming album Dream House, due September 18 via Giant Music. Featuring longtime friend and collaborator Cecile Believe, the track transforms grief, urgency, and emotional vulnerability into an explosive club-ready anthem.
Short for “say you wanna,” “SYW” begins with Empress Of standing almost completely alone vocally, delivering the opening lines with an exposed intimacy before the production gradually expands around her. Pulsing electronic textures and mounting percussion eventually push the song into a euphoric dancefloor release, creating a striking contrast between its fragile opening and high-energy conclusion.
The song’s emotional immediacy is exactly what makes it such a compelling introduction to Dream House.
“I love this song because it’s a part of the story in such an urgent, energetic way,” Empress Of shares. “Also, to collaborate with Cecile was such a dream.”
For Empress Of, Dream House is rooted in an experience that fundamentally reshaped her life. The album was written in the aftermath of the devastating Altadena fires, which destroyed her family’s home and forced her to confront the realities of loss, displacement, and rebuilding.
But the album isn’t solely about reconstructing a physical house.
Instead, Dream House explores the emotional and psychological process of putting yourself back together after experiencing profound loss. Across the record, rebuilding becomes both a literal and metaphorical idea, with each song reflecting a different stage of recovery.
The project began with an unexpectedly simple moment.
“One afternoon I made a little voice memo while playing a piano mumbling the phrase, ‘I wanna build a dream for you,’” Empress Of recalls. “That’s when this whole thing kind of started. Like a little spark.”
That spark eventually became an album about rediscovering creativity, joy, identity, and the reasons she began making music in the first place.
“Someone said a phoenix isn’t born, it’s remembered and in making this album I remembered why I make music,” she adds.
That idea of remembering rather than starting over sits at the heart of Dream House. Lorely Rodriguez, the artist behind Empress Of, isn’t simply documenting the aftermath of devastation. She’s tracing the process of finding her way back to herself while simultaneously rebuilding the physical space she once called home.
The connection between those two forms of reconstruction is especially tangible because Empress Of and her mother, Reina, were rebuilding their family home during the making of the record.
They watched the foundation being poured, the walls framed, and eventually the roof and front door installed. Each stage of the construction process became a physical reflection of the emotional work unfolding alongside it.
Reina also contributes vocals to the album, making her involvement feel particularly meaningful. While Empress Of’s mother has appeared throughout her catalog, her presence on Dream House carries a different emotional weight given the circumstances surrounding its creation.
The album also features Cecile Believe, whose collaboration with Empress Of extends a creative relationship that has developed over years, as well as Blood Orange. Empress Of recently joined Blood Orange onstage during his acclaimed Coachella performance, adding another layer to their ongoing creative connection.
Sonically and emotionally, Dream House follows one of the most personal paths of Empress Of’s career.
The album arrives as the follow-up to her acclaimed 2024 release For Your Consideration, which was also released through Giant Music. The bilingual album earned Pitchfork’s Best New Music designation, with the publication praising its dazzling approach as Empress Of leaned further into camp, fantasy, and her role as an executive producer.
The new project, however, appears to move into more vulnerable territory.
Where For Your Consideration embraced heightened fantasy and theatricality, Dream House focuses on what remains after the spectacle fades: loss, memory, family, creativity, and the difficult process of moving forward.
That evolution is reflected in “SYW,” which takes a deeply intimate vocal beginning and gradually turns it into a euphoric dancefloor moment. The transformation mirrors the broader narrative of Dream House—the movement from devastation toward something capable of producing joy again.
Over the course of her career, Empress Of has built a reputation for refusing to stay within a single musical or emotional lane. She has collaborated with artists including Blood Orange, Shygirl, Tommy Genesis, Boys Noize, and Cecile Believe, while opening for Lorde, Rina Sawayama, and Carly Rae Jepsen.
She has also performed at major festivals including Outside Lands, Austin City Limits, Portola, and Corona Capital, establishing herself as one of electronic pop’s most distinctive voices.
Now, Dream House represents a different kind of milestone.
It is an album about what happens after everything familiar has been disrupted—and about the decision to build something new without forgetting what came before.
To celebrate the album’s release, Empress Of will perform at Music Hall of Williamsburg in New York on September 30. The performance will hold particular significance as one of the venue’s final shows before it closes its doors this fall.
The appearance also creates a full-circle moment for Empress Of, who performed at the venue earlier in her career. Its closing chapter will mirror the themes running through Dream House: endings, remembrance, reconstruction, and the possibility of beginning again.
With “SYW,” Empress Of offers a powerful first glimpse into that world. Vulnerable at its core but built for the dancefloor, the track captures the tension between grief and release that defines the forthcoming album. Dream House arrives September 18 via Giant Music. “SYW” is out now, with more from Empress Of to come.
Empress Of: Instagram | Twitter | YouTube