Toronto darkwave duo TRAITRS plunge into the looping horrors of memory, identity erosion, and emotional paralysis on “Dream Drowning,” a brutally seductive, cinematic single from their forthcoming album Possessor that feels like an unblinking descent into black – trapping listeners inside a recurring nightmare where healing never arrives and the dark never lifts.

Stream: “Dream Drowning” – TRAITRS

Dreams aren’t always escape; sometimes they’re repetition – the same terror replayed until it hollows you out.

The mind loops what the heart can’t process, blurring memory and imagination until you no longer know which horrors were lived and which were conjured. In that in-between space – suspended between numbness and overwhelm – identity begins to slip, and self-recognition feels just out of reach. It’s there, on that outer edge of consciousness, that TRAITRS unveil “Dream Drowning,” a darkwave descent into recurring trauma, emotional paralysis, and the slow erosion of self.

I can’t tell if my own fathers dead
I saw him hanging in the shed
And now it’s time for my dream med
Ohhh ohhh
I’m tired of your heart

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Dream Drowning,” the brutally seductive third single from TRAITRS’ upcoming fourth album Possessor, out Friday the 13th, March 2026. Produced by longtime collaborator Josh Korody and mastered by Matt Colton, the record marks what the Toronto-based duo – Sean-Patrick Nolan and Shawn Tucker – call their most personal work yet – an emotional follow-up to 2021’s Horses in the Abattoir. Since emerging from the shadows over a decade ago, TRAITRS have steadily evolved from bedroom artists pressing cassette tapes on boutique labels into an internationally touring force, amassing millions of streams and performing hundreds of shows across North America and Europe.

Their sound – a cinematic collision of horror-tinged imagery, motorik drum loops, angular guitars, and anthemic choruses – has always nodded reverently to post-punk greats while carving out a distinctly modern cold wave identity. With “Dream Drowning,” they lean even deeper into that palette, channeling the haunted pulse of their forebears while sharpening their own dystopian edge into something more intimate, more exposed, and more unflinchingly human.

Pulsing drums form the song’s backbone – steady and unrelenting – as reverb-drenched lead guitars slice through the fog, their notes lingering like afterimages burned into the dark. The track begins softly, almost unassuming, before swelling into something vast and feverish. TRAITRS resist the urge to rush, and for nearly a full minute, no voice enters. Instead, they build a world through reverb-drenched instruments that shimmer and sweat, their textures bleeding into the negative space, tension coiling tighter with every passing bar. It’s patient, deliberate, almost ritualistic – a slow immersion into something ominous and inescapable. By the time the first vocal finally surfaces at the 55-second mark, the atmosphere is already thick enough to suffocate.

The opening lines strike with chilling immediacy: “I can’t tell if my own father’s dead / I saw him hanging in the shed / And now it’s time for my dream med…” It’s a jolt – not just because of the imagery, but because of how plainly it’s delivered. There’s no melodrama in the vocal, no theatrical excess to cushion the blow. Shawn Tucker sings as if reporting from inside the haze itself, detached yet trembling beneath the surface. The restraint makes it all the more devastating. After nearly a minute of instrumental tension, the human voice doesn’t arrive as relief – it arrives as confirmation that the nightmare has already begun.

From there, the song settles into a kind of haunted procession. The drums continue their steady pulse, mechanical and unyielding, while the guitars flicker like faulty memories, half-lit and unstable. Each line feels suspended in dim light, as if the narrator is watching his own unraveling from just outside his body. That distance – that inability to fully inhabit or escape the moment – mirrors the lyrical fixation on dreams as endless loops, horrors replaying without resolution.

By the time Tucker repeats, “I’m tired of your heart,” the phrase lands less as accusation and more as exhaustion – emotional depletion stretched thin. The first verse doesn’t explode; it tightens. It narrows the air in the room. And in doing so, it makes clear that “Dream Drowning” isn’t interested in shock value alone – it’s mapping the slow suffocation of self, the creeping numbness that sets in when pain stops feeling sharp and starts feeling permanent.

I’m dreaming of you drowning
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t heal myself

I’m dreaming of you dying
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t kill myself again
Like no else again
Like no one else
No one else

The breathtaking chorus of “Dream Drowning” doesn’t offer ‘release’ – it stages a drowning in real time, vast and all-consuming, where longing and self-destruction blur into one relentless tide: “I’m dreaming of you drowning / Through your eyes / But I can’t heal myself…” Where the verse feels contained and claustrophobic, the chorus expands outward, as if the ceiling suddenly lifts and the walls fall away. Synth pads rush in to fill the negative space, sultry and enveloping, transforming the skeletal tension of the intro into something massive and engulfing. The drums feel heavier now, less mechanical and more punishing, while the echoing guitars stretch into long, aching lines that seem to hover just above collapse.

The emotional pivot is staggering. The perspective shifts – through your eyes – blurring subject and object, victim and witness. It’s not just about watching someone else drown; it’s about inhabiting that drowning, seeing it from the inside out. And yet, the refrain circles back to paralysis: “But I can’t heal myself.” No catharsis. No resolution. Just repetition.

Tucker follows with “No I can’t heal myself / No I can’t kill myself,” a lyric that lands like a locked door on both ends – trapped between survival and surrender. It’s devastating in its honesty, especially against the sheer scale of the instrumentation. The music surges forward, dramatic and immersive, but the narrator remains stuck, looping the same confession again and again.

That tension – between sonic enormity and emotional stasis – is what makes the chorus so bruising. It roars, but it doesn’t rescue. It swells, but it doesn’t save. Instead, it pulls you deeper into the undertow, where longing, guilt, and numbness blur into one relentless tide.

Shawn Tucker describes the song’s genesis in stark, existential terms.

“When it comes to dreams, I’m standing on the outside edge of the world looking in,” he tells Atwood Magazine. “In my experience I’ve never remembered my dreams. Instead, I’m left navigating other people’s experiences, stories and trying to understand how it feels to dream. So many people have such vivid perspectives surrounding them; albeit meanings, reasonings, answers, or premonitions.”

“In ‘Dream Drowning,’ it’s the horrors of my life set on an endless loop, reoccurring over and over again. I’ve always had a fascination with dreams trying to understand the emotions attached to them. They feel otherworldly to me. To be honest, I prefer not to remember, it’s how I think my death will be… black.”

That final word – black – lingers long after the music fades. It reframes the song not just as nightmare, but as confrontation: A reckoning with emptiness, with the possibility that forgetting might be mercy. “Dream Drowning” doesn’t romanticize despair; it stages it – theatrical, feverish, almost operatic in scope. The pain here is raw, yes, but it’s also cinematic, deliberately rendered, transformed into something immersive and strangely magnetic.

The second verse deepens the disorientation rather than clarifying it. “I believe in dreams you’re always dead / You lost your tongue for things you said / And find yourself as someone else…” Identity fractures further – not just loss, but transformation. The self becomes unrecognizable. Guilt lingers and language fails. The dreamscape isn’t symbolic; it’s accusatory. And the repetition of “someone else” feels less like metaphor and more like erosion, as though the narrator is dissolving in real time.

I believe in dreams you’re always dead
You lost your tongue for things you said
And find yourself as someone else
Ohhh ohhh
I’m tired of your heart

I’m dreaming of you drowning
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t heal myself
I’m dreaming of you dying
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t kill myself again
Like no else again
Like no one else
Like no one else

Musically, TRAITRS intensify without overcrowding. Layers accumulate subtly – synth textures swell, guitars echo further into the periphery, percussion presses harder against the chest – yet the arrangement never feels chaotic. It feels controlled, deliberate, suffocating by design. The repetition of the chorus becomes more obsessive with each return, less like a hook and more like an obsession. By the final stretch, the words “like no one else” blur into mantra, breaking down meaning into rhythm, as if language itself is short-circuiting under emotional weight.

The emotional weight of “Dream Drowning” also signals the broader terrain of Possessor, a record born from what the duo describe as their darkest winter. Written during a period of profound life changes and depression – on gloomy days staring out windows as storms raged across Toronto – the record confronts mortality, alienation, and the fragile illusion of permanence head-on. “There’s a lot of anger, beauty and sadness on the album,” Tucker reflects. “I want to feel that someone is holding you when you’re cold, sad and alone in the dark. The soundtrack to a gloomy filled sorrowed love affair. It’s unconditional, unflinching, and unapologetic.” After a near four-year hiatus and the explosive return that preceded this chapter, Possessor is a resounding reckoning – a record created, in their own words, with nothing left to prove, only something honest left to say.

As TRAITRS prepare to unveil Possessor, they’ve been candid about the record’s emotional weight. “This is our most personal album yet and we can’t wait to share it with you,” they shared upon its announcement – a simple statement that carries quiet gravity. If “Dream Drowning” is any indication, that personal turn isn’t about restraint – it’s about revelation, letting the shadows speak plainly and without disguise.

I’m dreaming of you drowning
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t heal myself
I’m dreaming of you dying
Through your eyes
But I can’t heal myself
No I can’t kill myself again
Like no else again
Like no one else…

With “Dream Drowning,” TRAITRS don’t simply evoke doom – they inhabit it, sculpt it, let it bloom until it’s all-consuming.

The result is a provocative eruption that soaks you to the bone, a darkwave fever dream that feels far deeper than skin. It’s a descent that erodes slowly and steadily, wearing down the boundaries between memory and nightmare until all that remains is the loop itself, turning in the dark. The song doesn’t fight the blackness; it studies it, sits inside it, welcomes it in, and lets it breathe. In that way, “Dream Drowning” feels less like an escape from reality and more like an unblinking confrontation with it – the sound of identity thinning at the edges, dissolving into shadow. As Possessor approaches its March 2026 release, this single stands as a haunting testament to the duo’s evolution – more personal, more daring, and utterly unflinching.

Stream “Dream Drowning” exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and let TRAITRS pull you under to see what surfaces in the ensuing silence.

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Stream: “Dream Drowning” – TRAITRS

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