Dora Jar is in the driver seat of her tour van while her band-mates hold the phone up to her face so she can answer questions asked by a group of excited journalists. She is clearly having fun, sunglasses on and focused on the open road while telling us about her new album, No Way to Relax When You’re on Fire via Island Records.

Jar is like a magical creature, pixie-like in her presence and undoubtedly the main character in the world of up-and-coming alt-pop music. After releasing only a few songs, she was discovered by world-renowned pop star Billie Eilish and asked to join her on a stadium tour in 2022. She is the picture of dreams coming true, someone who has threaded the lofty and intangible into solid reality. After listening to her album, it is no wonder one of her favorite books, and the easy inspiration for her work is a fantasy grounded in science. We asked:

Your lyrics feel very literary, they’re descriptive, they tell stories, and they have characters. Are there any pieces of literature, like books or poetry that have inspired your work? 

Oh, definitely! One that comes to mind, is a book that Julie Andrews wrote called The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles. I don’t know if anyone has read it, but it is a children’s chapter book and it is about a scientist who is studying the DNA of the imagination. He finds three children to test this imagination machine on, and they travel to an alternate dimension and they confront these beings. That really opened me up to science and how imagination and science connect – I don’t know a lot about physics, but when I think about it, I feel like my imagination fills in a lot of those gaps and I feel open to learning things like string theory and the fourth dimension. So that book changed my life.

Reporting from the road, she is also on tour with her new album, leaving a little bit of magic on every stage she graces across the United States and soon the United Kingdom. She finished our chat with I also love Haruki Murakami novels, so make sure you grab a ticket and bring your favourite book, maybe she will sign it.

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