One of Aotearoa’s freshest voices in indie-folk, singer-songwriter Laeky (Te Aupōuri, Ngāpuhi, Raukawa), is back with the diaristic track, ‘not a dancer’. Following the 2024 release of her debut single ‘digital cigarettes’, Laeky continues to elevate the intimacy of acoustic strums and layered vocals, building a sonic atmosphere rich with raw emotion and creating a unique space for emotional solace.
‘not a dancer’ explores the feeling of being fundamentally out of step with life while everyone around you seems to move with an effortlessness out of reach. It twists and turns around the idea that “life is a dance”, a philosophy often associated with surrender, presence and trust. But instead of a blind romanticism of the concept, ‘not a dancer’ questions what happens when the steps don’t come naturally. What happens when survival has taught you rigidity instead of ease? When movement feels heavy instead of graceful?
“For a long time, I felt like everyone else knew how to exist naturally, how to move through relationships, happiness, confidence, spontaneity and everyday life with ease, while I remained stuck inside my own overthinking, fear, grief and self-doubt. I didn’t know how to just ‘be’. The song came from that disconnect: the feeling of being close to life, but never fully inside it,” Laeky shares.
Rather than resolving those feelings neatly, the song finds peace in something smaller and more human: continuing to move anyway. There’s a beauty in the tension between softness and survival. The track became less about learning how to dance correctly and more about accepting that awkward, imperfect movement is still movement, and that surviving at all can sometimes be its own kind of dance. Never perfectly, nor elegantly. Just honestly.
‘not a dancer’ carries comfort in the existential akin to the artistry of Phoebe Bridgers, paired with the humanity of Ethel Cain and the imagery of Lorde’s lyricism. The waltz of the verses spins into a whirlwind that rides the personification of “carry-on luggage”, “bottles full of rage” and a “hole in my pocket”.
Laeky opens up about how “a lot of the lyrics came directly from journal entries and fragmented thoughts about feeling disconnected from life, struggling to move forward… watching other people seem to navigate the world so effortlessly while I remained emotionally stuck.”
“Writing the song became less about songwriting in the traditional sense and more about documenting an internal conversation I had been having with myself for years.”
A few months later, Laeky revisited the track with her producer, Ben Woolford, and together they slowly began shaping it into the piece you’ll hear out in the world.
“There was never a rush with this song. It evolved gradually over the course of around eight months, with each session uncovering more emotional depth, texture and intention within it.”
‘not a dancer’ is a safety blanket of sorts, expertly weaving a net to catch you in a room full of people, no matter how out of step you’re feeling in your journey. It’s also the first glimpse of her forthcoming EP, ‘adjacent’, due later this year. The project continues her thoughtful approach to songwriting, exploring memory, identity and the messy, often complicated process of understanding yourself. Through intimate storytelling and atmospheric production, Laeky creates a sense of connection that resonates far beyond her own experiences.