Australian digital pop artist Katie Dey isn't exactly sure how to describe her upcoming seventh album universal will, released through her own label on November 6, but it's clearly a divergence from what she's done before.

Is it an "indie rock concept album about falling out of love with the computer," "a bedroom prog epic about the singularity," "a delusional 32 year old woman shoegazing her way through a mental breakdown," or a "screaming hate letter to the technofascists destroying the world at our expense"? All of the above, and more, if her personal letter masquerading as a press release is to be believed.

Listen to lead track "for you" below:

Writing in her letter, Dey says:

"it's about being online and how people and corporations try do things on our behalf, the flattening and desensitizing of information, the feeling of being watched and catered to in a way that you don't want and did not ask for but don't know how to stop. the video is supposed to be a sort of hallucinatory simulated scrolling experience. i was screenshotting things for weeks and compiling them and making connections between the images and the lyrics... this was a borderline psychosis inducing process. i hope it has a certain "smoke the whole pack" quality but for scrolling social media."

You can read the full letter on her Bandcamp page, but the key takeaways are that Dey spent about a year and a half making the record in her bedroom while navigating "the worst time of my life," and that it channels some of her earliest musical loves: "my bloody valentine, smashing pumpkins, unwound, the mars volta, sleater-kinney, pink floyd, built to spill, sunny day real estate, the wrens, sparklehorse etc."

As for what the songs are about, Dey writes:

"(in no particular order): looking at social media too much & flattening of information (image of dinner, image of massacre, image of puppy), jungian shadow selves & the conditions that lead to developing schizoid personalities, memory loss, relating more to a chatbot than a person, the feeling of being trapped by inevitability and mechanical decay, the seeming impossibility of real communication between people, getting addicted to gambling (on dogs, on horses, on people, on yourself), not remembering 'who you really are' or not knowing what that is supposed to mean, that new york times article about a boy who used chatgpt to assist in his suicide, what it felt like to see people on twitter memeing and quote rt dunking on a young trans girl who publically killed herself, the possibility that if we were to create real sentient artificial intelligence we would probably torture it to death before it does the same to us (or that maybe it is us, we’re the thing being tortured already), & what it might feel like if the world actually does end or the singularity does happen. probably would feel bad."

Probably, yeah 🫤

universal will is out November 6 as a self-release. Pre-order here. Tracklisting below:

1. for you
2. shadow self
3. masterplan
4. fearless zone
5. emerging from debris
6. vacant lot / home
7. last night of the world
8. angel in the server room
9. unfathomable you / catherine wheel
10. universal will