You might find Ann Arbor’s Dollie Rot in a parking garage stairwell, a lone field, or a dive bar stage.

Those haunting locales serve as the ideal backdrop for the gothic “it girl,” who released her debut EP Survivor’s Guilt in 2017 at age 16 and followed up with a handful of singles and the album Man’s Wrath in 2024.

In May, Rot released her latest EP, Hidden Works, a compilation of estranged tracks from her archives that reflect her signature low-fi sound, which is based around acoustic guitar and heaps of reverb.

“I touch on so many different points of strife in Hidden Works, and I wanted it to be a more well-rounded album than Man’s Wrath, which was a concept album with a theme present in all the songs,” Rot said. “Hidden Works is more mismatched. There’s less of a narrative quality, but it tells a story.”

Hidden Works consists of eight vignettes that explore sorrowful nostalgia, sobering realizations about adulthood, and, more shockingly, love.

“‘Only Posers Die’ in particular has a special place in my heart because I don’t write a lot of love songs, and if I do … they’re centered on loss,” Rot said. “To just write a love song and put it on a Dollie Rot album, even if there’s a hint of melancholy, was a big deal.”

“When it’s right it’s right / And I’ve been wondering why / I tried to love before you / I worship at the altar of your skin / You’re so cool, You’re so cool you know / I’m praying that you’ll be my final lover,” Rot sings on the track.

Rot’s exploration of love morphs throughout the expanse of Hidden Works, maneuvering between the love of place, the love of another, and even parental love.

While Rot has used her work to explore the emotions surrounding the loss of her father at an early age, her mother prevails as one of the stars of Hidden Works.

“It’s no secret that my dad is sort of an icon in my writing,” Rot said. “In my poems and songs, my dad is a prevalent figure in my work. As I’ve gotten older, my relationship with my mom has gotten a lot closer, and I started thinking that I didn’t write any of those songs about my dad until I lost him. So why would I not have a song honoring my mom, who is here now, who can experience it, and who can even respond? ‘My Mother’ is a really special song to me.”

“My Mother” brings listeners into an almost hidden room of interiority, one whose secret nature runs as deep as genes. Framed as hypothetical questions to her younger self and a younger version of her mother, Dollie asks these characters if they thought life would pan out the way it did. She ends the song with a simple proclamation of a desire to be saved by the forces that brought her to life.

“And in my head I’m still a baby / Needing her to come and save me / And in my head I see my father / Once they wеre in love / When hе had her,” Rot sings twice in the track.

Rot’s mom even flew out from Colorado to hear her play the song at The Blind Pig this past spring. The only thing more nerve-wracking than playing such an intimate song in front of the subject of the song was the performance itself. Many artists yearn for the stage and for strangers’ eyes to be fixated upward in a state of adoration, but Rot is openly unnerved by this.

“Honestly, live performance was never really in my mind when I started music,” she said. “Especially back then [with the release of Survivor’s Guilt], I had just really paralyzing performance anxiety and stage fright. Any time that I had to be in front of a group of people, especially with how vulnerable my work is, was really intimidating.”

Known for her low-fi, charmingly amateur production and confessional lyricism, Rot is a poet first and a musician second.

“It does not come naturally to me,” Rot said. “I’ve always said that I feel like being a writer or artist is a different skill than being a performer. My fear was that I wouldn’t have any stage presence, but I feel like I’m really starting to build a community here, and that’s not something I’ve ever really had because I don’t tend to stay in a place long enough to build that sense of security.”

Rot’s presence is deeply fluid, a pool that floods listeners and strays off into creeks that wind into oblivion. Her sonic universe is reminiscent of the religious story-building of Ethel Cain, the feminine mystery of Lana Del Rey, and the songwriting intimacy of Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker. As she strengthens her stage presence muscles, Dollie is also busy building a creative universe online.

“I’ve always been really drawn to religious iconography, from the crucifixes in my Catholic family’s house to seeing the cathedrals in Madrid,” Rot said. “The image of the crucifixion strikes me deeply because in my eyes it represents the holiness and universal nature of suffering. My work is no stranger to the subject of suffering, and the symbolism behind these religious depictions is powerful.”

Through her Substack writings, her carefully curated Instagram visuals, and most importantly, releases like Hidden Works, Rot is on a mysterious quest to explore her identity and flay her soul for the sake of her art.

“We are in a world of immediacy, gratification, and short-form content,” Rot said. “Having the slow and steady approach can feel thankless sometimes. Over the years, I’ve put my heart into these projects, and then one person buys it for $3. But when you really do have that love and drive for something, that doesn’t matter. It’s cool to see growth, but it’s really about reaching more people who might resonate with my work.”

Rot has reached a huge milestone with her listening base: 500,000 streams. On July 2, Rot released the five-song Burn demos EP, and her next single, “Die a Drunk,” is out August 15, ushering her into a new era of production styles, lyrical investigations, and artistic endeavors. 

Ally Hall is the writer and editor of Rocka Magazine, a music publicist, and a freelance writer.