Daniel Ye, the Los Angeles musician and singer-songwriter who records under the name dye, takes inspiration from a powerful grip of influences to create his unique brand of art-forward rock. From the grunge tones and fiery fuzz of alternative legends like Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and The Cure, plus the literate angst and melodic introspection of Elliott Smith and John Lennon — to the bombastic, darker orchestral maneuvers of My Chemical Romance and Smashing Pumpkins.

dye is the culmination of an adolescence spent falling in love with specific sounds, then learning to filter them through a unique sonic perspective in young adulthood and shaping the resultant styles into catchy three minute guitar-and-programmed-drums pop blasts.

It’s impossible not to hear wisps and whispers of those landmark artists in a dye song, but at the same time it isn’t possible to hear a dye song as anything but that: a dye song. And for Ye, a self-described shy kid from LA who picked up a guitar as a 13-year-old after hearing a long-gone Kurt Cobain on the radio, a dye song is more than the just sum of its parts—it’s a window into who he really, truly is…at last.