Why Deep Sea Diver had to start over again to get to ‘Billboard Heart’

Jessica Dobson, of the band Deep Sea Diver, was working on her album when she didn’t like what she was hearing.

“I felt incredibly disconnected from my own instincts and trusting myself, which is all you have, I think, as a person,” she says. “If you don’t trust yourself, then you are going to make inherently strange decisions.”

So Dobson started over, and songs like “Shovel,” about burying that inner critic, came out of the embers.

Dobson, who’s played guitar in Beck and The Shins, joins us to talk about walking away from a rented studio, having the confidence to embrace home demos, and what she ultimately realized Billboard Heart was truly about.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.