Dark Stars

Billotte's baroque yowl is a graceful, hypnotic instrument in its own right, the only extravagant element of White Magic. Her high-register delivery is ethereal but gutsy, floating through the rest of the music like a tethered balloon lifting her songs from the firmament. It's a haunting vocal technique, totally unique, another means of carrying the music into Billotte's imagined worlds. "Certain notes invoke a higher place and I instinctually follow those notes," she says. "I feel like voice is the purest instrument—it's straight from your mouth, it's straight from your emotions, and in my music it's coming from my unconscious, my inner world. I don't know how to explain it, but I follow that and it takes me to these places." - Seattle Stranger