British artist Domi Hawken is pressing ahead with her challenge to release a new song every month throughout 2026. Her latest, BABADABA, is raw, visceral rock with very little polish.
BABADABA is rock and roll at its most stripped-back, somewhere between primitive garage rock and distorted blues rock, with a fair bit of hard rock thrown in. It’s driven by a dense, gritty riff that gets stuck in your head and refuses to let go, repeating like a mantra from start to finish over a rhythm section with a hell of a groove. It brings together the proto-punk savagery of The Stooges and the gritty, slightly psychedelic electric blues of The Dead Weather.
The best thing about the track is Domi’s voice. She sings with her whole body, shifting from an almost nonchalant delivery to spine-tingling screams. The lyrics seem to touch on confusion, tension and the struggle to keep your cool, but what really sticks is the way she repeats syllables over and over, almost as if they were part of the percussion. It gives the song an even more primitive, unbridled feel.
A hypnotic blast of repetition and distortion. What comes next will be very different, though. Her next release, “THE ACT”, promises to reveal a far more intimate and vulnerable side. Yet another twist in her year of twelve songs in twelve months.
Catch Domi Hawken on: YouTube | Instagram | Soundcloud