Emerging Denver “fuzz folk” band Dollpile channel the ache of explaining yourself to someone who won’t hear you on “Fake Flowers,” a cathartic exhale of exhaustion, memory, and emotional unraveling – and an intimate first look at the band’s upcoming album, ‘Someone Else’s Heaven.’

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Stream: “Fake Flowers” – Dollpile

“Setting out fake flowers on the tabletop while you’re mouthing off…” Dollpile open “Fake Flowers” with a quiet sting – the kind that sinks in slowly before the full weight of the song settles around you.

The brooding alternative rock duo of Isadora Eden and Sumner Erhard, based in Colorado and newly renamed to reflect their collaboration, craft a sound they affectionately call fuzz folk – a moody, shadowed blend of indie rock, shoegaze, and gothic folk. “Fake Flowers,” the first single off their forthcoming album Someone Else’s Heaven, captures everything that makes Dollpile so arresting: Heavy but tender, intimate but engulfing, raw but warm to the touch.

setting out fake flowers on the tabletop
while you’re mouthing off
but i’m throwing out my voice for this
we both say we’ll try to listen but yeah right
it’s alright

keep it up, you look good…
keep it up, you look good…

The song moves like a low cloud rolling over a dark field – dense, humming, and strangely comforting. Its guitars rumble with a slow-burning tension, the distortion wrapping around Eden’s voice like a protective shroud. The weight doesn’t crush; it absorbs. It pulls listeners closer, deeper, until the song feels less like something to hear and more like something to sit inside. Even in its heaviness, there’s a warmth radiating outward – a cathartic, chest-tightening glow that makes the world momentarily still.

Eden traces the track’s origins to a specific emotional rupture. “Lyrically, it’s about feeling the need to explain yourself and the decisions you’re making to people who you don’t really think deserve your time,” she shares. “Especially when you’re having to say the same things and rehash the same difficult memories over and over again and the other person is not really hearing you.” That exhaustion sits at the center of lines like “I told you what I wanted to say but I can say it again… I’d walk back through it all but I don’t want to do it again.” The repetition becomes its own kind of ache – the dread of reliving something painful, paired with the frustration of never being understood.

I told you what I wanted to say
but I can say it again
say it again, i’d walk back through it all
but I don’t want to do it again
do it again

The title itself is rooted in real life. Eden recalls fidgeting with small crochet flowers during one of those draining calls. The phrase “fake flowers” suddenly felt too fitting to ignore – a metaphor for apologies, explanations, and gestures that go unrecognized or unreciprocated. A symbol of something offered earnestly, only to be met with indifference.

Musically, “Fake Flowers” bloomed quickly once Eden sent the demo to Erhard. “When I heard the solo demo for the first time I didn’t want to change any of the rhythm guitar or structure,” Erhard explains. Instead, he built a world around it – adding an understated lead line that began as a placeholder but ultimately felt essential, and shaping a drum pattern inspired by Sam Fender’s “Spit of You.” The result is a track that feels lived-in from its first breath, as if its bones were already there waiting to be unearthed.

Dollpile’s sonic DNA is steeped in mood and memory – music for “walking home alone after a party, doom scrolling til the sun comes up, and driving around your abandoned hometown pretending you’re actually going to call your high school best friend,” as they describe it.

you plot out which parts
of summer were a dream
cut and run and tell yourself
it’s not in your bloodstream
you’re still clean

keep it up, you look good…
keep it up, you look good…

That emotional landscape only deepens with Dollpile’s newest releases, each of which aches in its own irresistible fashion. The dreamy, glistening “Stoplights” and the heavy, gut-wrenching title track “Someone Else’s Heaven” expand the album’s world in two striking directions – one soft and shimmering, the other weighted and raw. Both songs pull us further into Dollpile’s shadowed, slow-burning universe, revealing new dimensions of their evolving sound while sharpening the emotional contours of this era. “Stoplights” offers a more tender glow, anchored in evocative lines like “watching snow fall in the stoplights like it’s new,” a lyric that sends shivers down the spine. By contrast, “Someone Else’s Heaven” arrives like a brash reckoning, settling in the chest long after the final note. Its haunting refrain is as much a confession as it is a collapse: “I’m someone else in someone else’s heaven,” Eden sings with a disorienting clarity, boiling down the song’s emotional rupture into one quietly devastating line. Together, these songs hint at a record built on contrast – glow and grit, hush and rupture – and showcase a band fully stepping into the world they’ve been carving out song by song.

As Dollpile step further into themselves, their fuzz folk identity feels increasingly distinct – textured, unhurried, and unafraid to sit in the deeper corners of feeling.

“Fake Flowers” distills everything that makes Dollpile such a compelling force in the alternative world – the weight, the warmth, the emotional clarity, the way their songs feel both bruised and strangely comforting. It’s a gentle eruption, the kind that engulfs rather than overwhelms, holding space for the feelings we try not to revisit and the truths we’re tired of repeating. As Dollpile move toward Someone Else’s Heaven, this track stands as an early, undeniable highlight – a testament to their sharpened vision, their collaborative chemistry, and their ability to turn heaviness into something incandescent.

We caught up with Isadora Eden and Sumner Erhard to discuss their creative process, their soul-stirring sound, and the stories shaping Someone Else’s Heaven. Dig deeper into Dollpile’s dynamic world in our intimate conversation below, and stay tuned for their proper debut album, out March 11, 2026!

I told you what I wanted to say but I can say it again
say it again, I’d walk back through it all
but I don’t want to do it again
do it again

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:: stream/purchase Fake Flowers here ::

:: connect with Dollpile here ::

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Stream: “Fake Flowers” – Dollpile

A CONVERSATION WITH DOLLPILE

Dollpile: We’re a Denver-based shoegaze/alt rock band for fans of Slow Pulp, Soccer Mommy, and DIIV. It is music for walking home alone to after a party, doom scrolling ’til the sun comes up, and then driving around your abandoned hometown pretending you’re actually going to call your high school best friend.

Dollpile: We spent a while trying to think of a new name that was unique and felt right. We had a note with probably hundreds of name ideas, but the eventual name ended up coming from an offhand comment made during our album cover photoshoot. The visual theme for this album was a kind of haunted Alice In Wonderland vibe, an extension of the ‘easter sunday meets horror movie’ vibe of our last album. We found a bunch of dolls at thrift stores and used them in a photoshoot, and had been riffing on band name ideas all day with our photographer Chlo. At one point Isadora said ‘you can just put those dolls over in the doll pile’ and Chlo said Dollpile was a pretty good band name. And that was that!

Dollpile: I think every band struggles with defining their sound in one genre. We have folk elements to our songwriting (many of the songs start as folky guitar/vocal demos), but the finished songs are usually somewhere between shoegaze and alternative rock. This album has soft songs with no drums and heavy guitar rock, and finding a descriptor that encompasses all that is a challenge. Fuzz folk was something our bass player, José, said at a practice that just kind of stuck.

Dollpile: This song started because I (Isadora) was really obsessed with the songs “Shit Twins” by Dads and “Lifetime” by Euphoria Again. I was playing around on guitar in the same tuning that Shit Twins is in, and wanting to find a chord progression that felt like the guitars in Lifetime. The result doesn’t really sound like either of those songs, but it has the same feeling to me which is all I was going for. Lyrically, it’s about feeling the need to explain yourself and the decisions you’re making to people who you don’t really think deserve your time– especially when you’re having to say the same things and rehash the same difficult memories over and over again and the other person is not really hearing you. The title comes from real life- I had all these little crochet flowers I was fidgeting with during one of these phone calls, and that phrase felt apt for the subject matter. The song, as all our songs do, really became something special when I sent the demo to Sumner. We fleshed it out from a solo guitar and vocal demo to a full song in a day.

When I (Sumner) heard the solo demo for the first time I didn’t want to change any of the rhythm guitar or structure– I was aiming for something that felt unique but also supported the intricacies of her guitar. The guitar lead line in the verse was originally just a placeholder, but by the time the rest of the instrumentation around it was written it felt perfect for the section. The drum beat is inspired by listening to a lot of Spit of You by Sam Fender.

Dollpile: A lot of songs for me take on different meanings and feelings as time goes on. At this point it’s been almost a year since we recorded this album, and longer since we actually wrote the songs, but I still remember writing the initial chord progression and melody/lyrics really clearly. I think this song just has a really solid vibe. It feels cozy and fuzzy and like the perfect song for sitting in the passenger seat, driving through a city in the rain.

Dollpile: “Fake Flowers” was the first music video we fully diyed (other than getting some coloring help from our friend Ethan Lien). Conceptualizing, set building, filming and editing this video was such a learning process and so much fun. It feels like an extension of the creative process of writing the music itself, and we love how the video came out. This song in particular felt really cathartic to write, and I was able to get some frustrating emotions out and move on a bit. The prechorus and chorus feel that way especially every time we play it live, kind of like a big extended eye roll at the person it’s directed to.

We chose this song as the first single off the new album because it encompasses our fuzz folk sound while also giving hints at what to expect from the new record. We experimented a lot with the recording process with this song by recording some of the lead guitar with a cheap acoustic guitar into a harmonica mic into guitar pedals. Mixing lo-fi sounds with our producer Corey Coffman’s hi-fi approach gives this song and our new record a polished and raw sound combo that we love.

Dollpile: Thanks! This is one of our favorites, and the only song on the album that started as a jam. Sumner and I (Isadora) write all the songs together, and we were jamming a bit before José and Eliza came over for band practice. The verses came first, and I love that syncopated picking pattern on the baritone. That weekend we demoed out the full song with structure and bass and lead guitar. The twinkly little lead lines in the verses feel so tender and special and make me feel like crying when I hear them. I added vocals last, which is why this song is so hard to play and sing at the same time.

Dollpile: After hearing the new material live, a friend described the new songs as “like your old music put on a leather jacket and started smoking ciggies.” Dollpile LLC would never glorify cigarette use, but we agree: the new music feels the most confident, most ‘us’ it’s ever felt.

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:: stream/purchase Fake Flowers here ::

:: connect with Dollpile here ::

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Stream: “Fake Flowers” – Dollpile

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