Fast-forward to now: Jessi recorded Dark Matter earlier this spring and released it on October 31, 2025, a fitting cosmic-meets-shadow date for an album this evocative. She’s also working on another project with Chris Benelli called Dreaming Lotus — an 80s-pop, synth-driven world that’s wildly different from this EP but just as exciting. One thing Jessi was adamant about was not doing the modern slow-drip rollout. Everyone told her, “Release singles first, rush this out, follow the trends.” But she didn’t want that. Dark Matter is meant to be listened to start to finish. Eight songs. Thirty to forty minutes. A full journey, not chopped-up fragments. She wants listeners to sit inside the world she built — to feel each transition, each mood, each universe within the record.

Jessi Robertson: “I want to make music that is true to me and expresses how I feel about the world, so I don’t bother following trends. They always pass”

Listening to “Dark Matter” feels like stepping into a private universe. It’s intimate yet vast, fragile yet resolute, and dark yet hopeful. Jessi Robertson has crafted a personal purification and an invitation for listeners to confront their hidden depths. This is more than an album. It’s an act of courage, a testament to authenticity, and a masterclass in turning vulnerability into art. Jessi Robertson is a voice to be reckoned with. She’s an artist unafraid to confront darkness, both cosmic and personal, and light it up with emotional clarity. Welcome her not just to the stage of music, but to the inner orbit of anyone who has ever felt like they were “too much or not enough.”

Sonically, the album leans into moody indie rock, atmospheric folk, and minimalist textures, allowing her voice and lyrical honesty to take center stage. It’s vulnerable, experimental, and unabashedly idiosyncratic — all the qualities she once feared revealing.

In embracing her “too muchness,” Jessi Robertson has created her truest work yet. “Dark Matter” is a brave, luminous reminder that what we hide often holds our brightest light.

Singer and songwriter Jessi Robertson brings a soft, ethereal rock sound to your speakers today, with a dreamy ambient sound that steals your heart right from the start. As the song builds in rhythm and energy, an effortless cascade of emotion and sound is what ensues, fully enveloping you in its charm. The mix also packs a punch with its low-end and control. It’s a beautiful, transportive listen — tender yet powerful; with warm ochre guitars and a distinctly sunset sound, this one is for those long trips, for sure

I’ve always tried to be truthful and vulnerable in my songwriting and performances, but I kept a tight rein on the subject matter. I didn’t know what masking was, but I think I was secretly proud of showing a tough exterior to the world and hiding how hurt and confused I sometimes felt. I built up this persona of someone strong and undefeatable. I could let people peek behind the curtain, but only to a point. I didn’t want to reveal the stuff that didn’t match up with the person I created. I have always felt a bit other, and it shows in my past songwriting, but with this album, I gave up on that outer shell. I stopped listening to all the imagined critics and let myself be me.

The album continues to impress from there, ranging from the late-night climactic vocal build on “Persistent Memory” — equating personal loss to “drowning on dry land” — to rousing finale “Object of Desire,” where perceptions of a broken self stir — aspiring to “exist as more than an avatar” as mellow guitar stylings intermingle with the soulful vocal passion. Dark Matter is a heart-on-sleeve, definitive success in songwriting from Jessi Robertson

What really drew me in was how the album flows as a whole. It feels like a journey through memory and self-discovery with moments that hit quietly and others that rise up with real intensity. The production fits perfectly and gives each instrument room to breathe. You can tell this record was made with care and purpose, from the smallest details to the bigger emotional themes running through it.

Robertson, who spent 15 years in Brooklyn’s indie scene before settling in Nashville in 2018, blends the city’s raw introspection with the meticulous storytelling tradition of the American South.

Jessi Robertson is creating a brand of music that far surpasses genre boundaries and conventional styles. Her style can be best described as art rock. Forming with fluid and free contours, it allows the artist the space to expand and explore themes in ways they never have been before. Her music is elastic and vast. Always dynamic. ‘Dark Matter’ is the artist’s latest release, a collection of alt pop that is edged with shadows, mysteries, secrets, and deep emotions. The allure of the songs lie in the confessional vocals blended with cryptic instrumental explorations. 

There are albums that merely document a chapter in an artist’s life, and then there are albums that feel like a rebirth. Dark Matter, the latest release from Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jessi Robertson, belongs firmly to the latter. Released on October 31, 2025, it is both a revelation and a reckoning—a body of work that peers unflinchingly into the vast spaces between identity, isolation, and acceptance.

In Dark Matter, Jessi Robertson transforms the concept of darkness into something luminous, proving that even the heaviest gravitational pull can lead to light, understanding, and self-acceptance.

Translated: Across eight songs, she takes us on a small personal journey, presenting impressive guitar‑driven tracks with substantial, meaningful lyrics in a narrative style. We love the storytelling approach, embodied by a truly unique voice that sounds remarkably expressive and effortlessly light at the same time. With a perfect vibrato in the final notes and gorgeous multi‑layered harmonies, she delivers one goosebump moment after another.

Translated from French to English: Dark Matter is an album of rebirth through science and silence. Jessi Robertson doesn’t sing to seduce or to please; she sings to reassemble herself, to rediscover coherence between chaos and clarity. This record is a living organism, full of magnificent errors, human tremors, and pure emotional intelligence.

Listening to Dark Matter is understanding that light never comes alone — that it only finds its meaning by brushing against darkness. And in that in‑between space, somewhere between Kate Bush and a dying star, Jessi Robertson has just created her own galaxy.

With Dark Matter, Robertson breaks open her creative boundaries to reveal something powerfully human. It’s bold, haunting, and deeply affecting – the sound of an artist who has stopped trying to fit in and started truly belonging to herself.

The arrival point of a heartfelt personal journey, ‘Dark Matter’ feels truly special and vulnerable, showcasing the deep introspection enjoyed by Nashville-based singer-songwriter Jessi Robertson. There are a few considerations to make, and a few bits of information that are useful to fully decode the record. For now, though, let’s see what the album itself has to offer. Packing eight evocative, spacious pieces, ‘Dark Matter’ constantly oscillates between gritty 90s-flavoured rock and dreamier, haunting textures, the perfect formula for Robertson’s cathartic, melancholic vocals. 

What makes Dark Matter so powerful is the courage behind it. Robertson doesn’t shy away from her neurodivergent identity; she builds her art around it, translating the complexities of perception and emotion into music that feels universal. The scientific metaphors — black holes, quantum bridges, thermodynamics — are not gimmicks, but symbols of how she understands the world: through systems, energy, and interconnectedness. It’s a deeply intellectual record, but also profoundly human. In an era obsessed with external validation, Dark Matter is an inward journey — one that invites listeners to confront their own unseen forces.

In the end, Dark Matter isn’t about darkness at all, but illumination — the kind that only comes when you dare to look into the void and find yourself staring back. Jessi Robertson has crafted an album that’s deeply personal and cosmically vast, a work that bridges science and soul, intellect and emotion. It’s a map of the invisible — proof that the heaviest parts of us, the ones we can’t always name or show, are the very things that hold us together.

dark matter by jessi robertson feels like moonlight breaking through heavy clouds. it’s raw, celestial, and full of quiet revelation. across ten tracks, the nashville-based artist turns introspection into something cosmic – blending folk, alt-rock, and dream-pop with a warmth that feels achingly human.

The singer-songwriter secures a clear unique selling point with her unmistakable voice. It takes center stage melodically, dynamically, and expressively, and seems to tell the story of a very personal little journey. I also mustn't forget to mention the minimalist instrumentation, which gives the music a remarkably honest, authentic, and handcrafted character with a DIY flair.