A Chat with Casey Dienel (18.08.25)
Casey Dienel has always resisted neat categories. Whether fronting White Hinterland, crafting bold solo work, or stepping into her newest era with My Heart Is an Outlaw, their songwriting thrives in contradiction. Equal parts playful and piercing, intimate and expansive, soft and confrontational. Known for their sharp wit and fearless honesty, Dienel approaches music as both experiment and excavation: a way to untangle love, autonomy, desire, and the messy in-betweens of human connection. We chat with Casey Dienel about their latest single ‘Your Girl’s Upstairs’, the art of balancing tenderness with bite, and how embracing contradictions, romantic and hermitic, flirtatious and homebound, has reshaped both their songwriting and thier sense of self.
OSR: For someone who’s never heard Casey Dienel, how would you describe your sound in three words?
CD: I’d say “my pronouns are weird / little / guy.” Alternatively I’d say it’s insatiable, honest, and fun.
OSR: ‘Your Girl’s Upstairs’ is such a vivid, emotionally layered track. What was the initial spark or moment that led you to write it?
CD: It’s really about control. Who has it? Why do they want it? I live alone, which I love, by the way. But as someone who invariably dates in open relationship structures, sometimes that nasty bit of jealousy rears its head. Someone being enthusiastic about their wife having a girlfriend, until they start to worry that maybe their wife might enjoy being in queer partnerships more. I think a lot of that fear is based on the idea that you should have control over the person you’re with, and as I see it, no one has control over anyone. This idea that a person can “steal” someone is suspect to me. I find it interesting that most happy endings in songs and literature circle around marriage, when my experience is that I’ve felt the most stifled in some of my domestic partnerships. Some of the most domineering relationships I have been in were monogamous. Having a place of my own, a garden I can work in, a variety of loving relationships, both romantic and platonic – this has given me my centre and stability.
OSR: You’ve described yourself as an “incorrigible flirt, a romantic, a cranky homebody, and an unapologetic perv”. How do these identities influence your songwriting lens?
CD: Isn’t songwriting one big flirtation? Much of storytelling is enticement. Will you listen to this tale I have to tell? To invoke Dickinson, songwriting at its best is a chance to “tell the truth, but tell it slant.” To embrace all the contradictions within. The Romeo, the fainting diva, the hermit, the hideous goblin. No person is one thing. No song has to be, either. I like songwriting to be a place that asks questions rather than resorting to easy answers.
OSR: How did collaborating with meg duffy, Spencer Zahn, and Max Jaffe shape the sonic architecture of the song?
CD: The original demo was just me and a Wurlitzer. I’d say meg’s playing is a big influence here. I’d been listening to Hand Habits and saw them play with Perfume Genius at Red Rocks, opening for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I was so stunned by their sound. When Schatz and I were doing album prep, we decided to approach each song like we were building a cast for a film. What kind of sound did we want? I realized a lot of what I wrote would sound interesting with guitar in the mix. I thought of meg immediately. It was essential to me that we have a low-ego room and bring in a set of absolute rippers. I’d known Spencer for many years, and Max has been playing with Dave Harrington for ages. I think the key to great studio chemistry is a mix of talent and not having played with everyone a ton of times before. Keeps everybody on their toes a little so you get these lightning-in-a-bottle moments. We played the song through a few times before rolling tape. Meg, in particular, brings so much curiosity and energy to a session. They’re full of really cool ideas! I loved the mission of writing a song that could take on the color of other voices without getting diluted in any way.
OSR: There’s a real tension between softness and confrontation in the lyrics. How do you navigate that emotional balancing act while writing?
CD: I like when art imitates life, and isn’t life just one balancing act of confrontation and tenderness back to back? Lyrically, I love a callback and a turn. I think Annie Dillard has had a big influence on my lyrics – just the reminder to make every word, every adjective count. How specific can you get? When choruses have a twist and aren’t repeated verbatim each time, it changes the depth of the playing field in the story. Each verse of this song plays with perspective. The first is very wide-angle lens (a lover’s troubled marriage), and the second flips to first person. Being on the other side, before the decision to take things into their own hands.
OSR: What did it feel like to step back into the studio for your first studio-recorded full-length? Did it change your approach?
CD: Honestly, pretty scary. Initially we booked a session in LA to record a few songs. I wasn’t sure if what I had in me was going to be album-length. I figured if I came out with one song I was happy with, that’d be enough. My approach this time around was to really lean into being the kind of leader I actually am, rather than the one I felt pressure to be when I was younger in White Hinterland. I’m decisive but not a driver or helicopter parent in the studio. I want people to enjoy themselves when they’re doing a session with me, which in turn helps me relax. Half of production is all about setting the conditions of the rooms with the you want: low-ego, relaxed, great snacks. Pay people their full day rate. When people feel valued and trusted, I think they perform better. When they are having fun, I feel more comfortable pushing for different kinds of takes. Also I cannot stress enough how important it is to delegate! Adam took on writing the charts and scheduling dates so I could focus on getting the songs completely finalized in advance. Don’t be a hero, don’t try to do it all yourself.
As for my own personal approach, I take people’s time seriously. It starts with me. To show up the way I want to in that setting means I have to be prepared, too. Go to bed super early, drink plenty of water, do my stretches and show up warmed up and in the mood to play. I don’t leave that stuff up to chance anymore. If I want everyone else to feel relaxed, I’ve got to be responsible for managing my own stress or Sunday scaries or whatever.
OSR: Can you talk about the line “She played house, played dead…”, it’s so potent and seems to anchor the song emotionally.
CD: In relationships, it takes two, y’know? You can have two very good people who love each other and yet, for whatever reason, don’t bring out the best in each other. Or one is ready for more commitment than the other. In my experience, the times I’ve “played house” or “played dead” were about succumbing to a narrative – trying to get married by 30, or be a “good partner” by doing all the chores after feeling like trying to get them on board is a losing battle, or just checking out to keep the other partner from feeling bad. Ultimately, this only hurts everyone involved. In a number of my straight relationships, I felt like a bad partner because I didn’t want to do the things expected of me. In queer relationships, it’s been really healing to confirm that it’s ok to upend those roles. In fact, doing so is sexy. I think whenever we start to give up and “play dead” to protect the other person, it’s worth asking – is staying together better than the alternative? There is a world of possibilities out there!
OSR: You’ve said this era is about embracing contradictions. What’s a contradiction about you that you’ve learned to love?
CD: The big one is that I need both love and autonomy. I am a big, sappy romantic, and I don’t just romanticize the people I date. I am romantic towards my friends, toward nature, my pets, toward my musical practice. I love really big, and while it may not be for everybody, for the people it’s for, I will go to the mat for them. To quote a dear friend, “your only enemy is the one in your way when you set your mind to something.” That said, I’m continuing to work on my own people pleaser tendencies. I know I am a better lover when I have the space I need to write. I’m happier when I know it’s ok to step away sometimes and go shed, and that it won’t hurt the other people in my world.
OSR: Do you consider My Heart Is An Outlaw to be in conversation with your past work, or more of a personal reset?
CD: I think all of my work is in a dialogue with past work. You need context to change. With this album, I was able to get back to the place I wrote from as a child. Just me and a piano, in the house by myself. Most work we make is more intelligent than we are. I am curious what these songs have to tell me about the future. For instance, ‘Imitation of a Woman to Love’ is so intensely sapphic and fierce and all these things I wasn’t really clocking at the time of writing. I was just trying to write through this very turbulent period of my life, scared to let anyone in. I needed to know in a break-glass situation that I could write and produce on my own, and now I know that. My three White Hinterland albums were an education in production. To have any of the confidence I have now is a result of making all that came before, My Heart is an Outlaw. I suspect this album is teaching me that it’s a good thing to let other people into the process. That trust can make the music stronger in the end. Even if I could have muddled through on my own, it was so much more fun to partner with Adam on this. If it’s not a good hang, what is the point?
OSR: You’ve had many eras, White Hinterland, solo work, now this outlaw chapter. What’s one thing that’s stayed consistent about you as an artist through all of them?
CD: The first thought that popped into my head is: I’ve always been a mouthy pain in the ass! Hah. To be fair, I’ve been privileged to have so many eras because I started so young. Was I 20 when my first record came out or something like that? What I learned in my twenties is that a lot of older men will come along with advice (some well-intentioned, some not so). Take it with a fat grain of salt. I think what’s been consistent about me is that I always trust myself before any of those with more power than me. No label executive knows more about my songs than I do. I love my team, but I think a lot of younger artists make the mistake of assuming their label or publicist or agents are going to have all the answers. It’s not really their job to. It really comes down to the artist having a strong POV about their work and how it is perceived.
What has been consistent for 20 years is that I always believed in myself as a songwriter – even if I didn’t say it out loud or if it wasn’t always apparent to people working with me. I believed in myself before there was praise. There is something that happens when I am writing that is as close to religion as I know. I’m so grateful that’s never dissipated.
Many thanks to Casey Dienel for speaking with us. Find out more about Casey Dienel on their Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify.
