Mare: 'Dolly Dahlia'

The Sunday Music Drop is a weekly radio series hosted by the KQED weekend news team. In each segment, we feature a song from a local musician or band with an upcoming show and hear about what inspires their music.

San Francisco’s Mare (Jess Konye) is a multi-genre artist who makes songs that are experimental, pop, and electronic adjacent. While originally from upstate New York, Konye moved to the city a few years ago.

She’ll be releasing eight more singles in the coming weeks and playing shows with her six-person band to prep for the production of her first LP. She hopes to have a full-length record ready for the fall of next year.

Mare’s name comes from “lunar mare,” which refers to the large, basaltic plains on Earth’s Moon.

“I’ve always been in love with the moon since I was like a little kid,” said Mare. “My music that I want to create is textural, vibey, ambient, and spacey. So, I chose the name Mare.”

Mare’s musical influences include Debussy and Ravel, as well as Japanese composers Joe Hisaishi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Mare says she focuses on the texture of her music, referring to the ambient soundscapes that exist in the background of her songs.

“In any given Mare song, there might be like a foreground sound, but there’s also like a lot of ambient [that] just drones in the background,” she said.

When it comes to songwriting, Mare will start by humming a melody to play on the guitar. After that, she uploads it to Ableton Live, the audio production software she uses to create music, and loops the sound.

“From there, I inform myself on like what to do next, and then as it evolves, it turns less into what would ‘x’ artist do and more of like ‘oh this feels right’ to play that note, this feels right to add this texture, or to say this thing,” she said.

Mare says her song “Dolly Dahlia” is representative of her artistry both up to this point and where she’s headed in the future. The song is named after Dolly, a friend she made over the internet, who also shares her love of the moon. The lyrics are paraphrases of the way Dolly speaks.

“We were like talking about the concept of like a friendship garden, where I’ll go to your house and give you seeds to plant a plant to remind you of me, and you can do the same, and she was like, ‘well, I’m Dolly, so I’m gonna give you a Dahlia and also, alliteration,’ and so I was like, ‘that’s so cool,'” said Mare. “I named the song after that sentiment.”

Mare’s band members include Jason Romero, Chloe Donovan, Stephanie Olinger, Finn Roy, and JC Grady. Mare and her band will be performing at Neck of the Woods in San Francisco on June 26th, so you can go hear her live.