White Poppy

White Poppy is the solo project of Crystal Dorval, a Vancouver-based musician and multimedia artist who describes her music as "therapeutic pop." Her warm, soothing songs feature multiple layers of ethereal vocals bathed in guitar fuzz, and are often grounded by rough drum-machine beats. Initially issuing much of her music on cassette, she's released several LPs on Not Not Fun Records, including 2015's Natural Phenomena and 2023's Sound of Blue. Dorval initially began creating music in 2009 under the name My Friend Wallis, an Afro-pop-influenced indie pop project in which she played ukulele, guitar, bass, and percussion, and was occasionally joined by percussionist Danny Costello and bassist Kristian North. The project released a few EPs and split 7"s before ending in 2012. Dorval debuted the White Poppy moniker in 2012 with the release of two cassettes (Song a Day on Canadian label Green Burrito and I Had a Dream on Los Angeles-based Not Not Fun), as well as the one-sided 7" single "Mirage Man" on Vancouver-based Kingfisher Bluez. All three releases were recorded by Dorval at home, and featured hiss-covered dream pop songs influenced by Krautrock and shoegaze. In 2013, the cassette label Constellation Tatsu issued Drifters Gold, White Poppy's dreamiest, spaciest release yet. Later in the year, Not Not Fun released White Poppy's self-titled full-length, which was her first professionally mixed and mastered recording as well as her most sonically ambitious work to date. The following year, Dorval collaborated with Not Not Fun labelmate Samantha Glass for a self-titled tape as Dorval & Devereaux, released by American label Moon Glyph. Dorval spent nine months recording the next White Poppy album by herself in a farm located on Vancouver Island. The primarily instrumental Natural Phenomena was issued by Not Not Fun in mid-2015. A more vocal-driven album titled The Pink Haze of Love was released on cassette in 2017. She returned to Not Not Fun in 2020 with the full-length Paradise Gardens, which she described as "new age shoegaze bossa nova." Sound of Blue, a serene set of songs about finding internal paradise, appeared in 2023.
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