DOTA

The beauty of it is: it could just as easily be DOTA’s very first album. You don’t miss anything you love about Dota, but the music is even more minimalist, more bouncy—adults would say: richer in contrast. The lyrics delve even more directly into the heart of darkness, are even more devotedly searching, and remain clear even in the midst of uncertainty. Perhaps it’s also a product of her engagement with the poetry of Mascha Kaléko, to whose musical interpretation she has dedicated two albums over the past three years.

DOTA — written in all caps for a reason, because the name represents not only Dota Kehr’s poetic self but also the community around her, within which the music has been taking shape for several years now: guitarist Jan Rohrbach, drummer Janis Görlich, keyboardist Patrick Reising, and bassist Alexander Binder. Together with this band, Dota Kehr arranges the songs and records them. Together, they write the DOTA formula on the board: Every word also means at least its opposite; question marks everywhere, hardly any exclamation points.

Question: What should songwriters sing about in these times?

Next question: What exactly are “these times”?

Dota asked herself these questions while preparing for her new album. The answers

lie along her path like road signs as soon as she begins to work in earnest.

All it has ever taken is a keen eye, a voice that’s her own, and a heart big enough to hold more than just her retirement savings. Dota knows who she is and sees the things that connect her to—and separate her from—the world she lives in. Things that give her hope and things that repel her—which she confronts in her songs with honesty (“Das wogende Meer”) or biting irony (“Milliardäre”).