As Daisy the Great, Kelley Nicole Dugan and Mina Walker make folk-inflected indie rock that spans a multitude of moods, capable of being clever, devastating, or both simultaneously, spanning harmony-laden pop to powerhouse balladry. The pair first met as acting majors at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where they began co-writing a musical about a fictional band before realizing they could make it happen in real life and set out as Daisy the Great.
2017 saw Daisy the Great make an auspicious debut with “The Record Player Song,” which quickly proved an immediate smash now boasting over 250M worldwide streams and multiple viral moments on TikTok. A full-length debut LP, I’m Not Getting Any Taller, arrived in 2019, followed in 2020 by the quarantine-born Soft Songs EP. In 2021, Daisy the Great teamed with acclaimed indie-pop trio AJR for “Record Player,” a brand new song inspired by their original 2017 hit.
Having now grown into a full six-piece band currently featuring Matt Lau on guitar, Bernardo Ochoa on bass, Matti Dunietz on drums, and Brie Archer on additional vocals, Daisy the Great first heralded ALL YOU NEED IS TIME with the dazzling “Glitter. Hailed by Atwood Magazine as “a dreamy, inspiring alternative anthem to let our light shine,” the track is joined by an official music video – directed and edited by Dugan and Walker. The band also visited 90.9 The Bridge in KC for a session that NPR included in their 2022 “Sessions of The Year” list and appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show Me Music” series, available on the show’s Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook channels. 2023 saw the band releasing a new version of “Tell Me Have You Been Dancing” featuring vocals from indie pop artist Claud and a reimagined emo lo-fi version of their song “Glitter” titled “Glitter 2”. The band released two new songs “Looking U Up” and “Tough Kid” just ahead of their European headline tour, with more music to follow.
“Our music is generally pretty introspective, and we are often interested in the complexities or ironies we see within ourselves,” Dugan says. “That’s something we love about writing—you can say something small and delicate and true that maybe feels scary to say, but once you put it out there, it can turn into a comfort for anyone that might also be feeling that way.”