Sharp and unguarded, Leilani Patao’s daisy arrives like small and honest confessions of a diary that is whispered through distortion. It’s personal, but not precious. Across the six tracks of her EP, she turns memory into texture, grief into rhythm, and intimacy into something you can hold without fully understanding. Every song is a story of care, guilt, and tenderness and of the quiet transformations that come from loving deeply and surviving it.
On the opening track, “branded”, Leilani says,
I never intended this song to sound like this, but as I was laying out all the pieces of this EP, this started to feel like the overture of everything that was to come.
What’s unique about the song is that through its textures it asks one to trust and believe in Leilani before her story even truly unfolds. As the song unfolds and beneath its playful bounce one discovers that it’s really an elegy to her childhood dog, Daisy, who was not only a companion but a tether and a symbol of innocence lost too soon. Leilani’s grief is layered in production rather than laid bare in words.
Twisting jealousy and infatuation into a sonic tailspin, “get em boy” was written before Leilani confessed her feelings to her now-girlfriend and collaborator, Nat. With its vocal jumps and jagged rhythms the song mimics emotional panic and captures that perfect blend of self-awareness and chaos. The song buzzes with electricity that feels almost organic, like emotion that has been spliced through a circuit board.
“BIRD WHISTLE” is where peace and pain coexist.
It’s about just wanting to be friends, but you can’t forget how you used to feel for someone.
The track is tender and uneasy and every sound sweet until it isn’t but it does capture that moment when letting go stops feeling like loss and starts feeling like relief.
On “Red Hair Dye”, Leilani turns her focus inward, From growing up, to mothers, and to the strange nostalgia that arrives uninvited. The song is stitched together with home video audio of her mom talking to Daisy. That intimacy blurs the line between art and memory. It’s a track about wanting answers from the people who raised you while still wanting them to tuck you in. It’s also where Leilani’s voice feels most vulnerable. Steady but trembling, both child and adult in the same breath.
The penultimate track,“portrait”, is the record’s purest love song and is written from the perspective of someone finally believing they’re worthy of being loved.
“In my current relationship, I learned to stop thinking that my girlfriend was doing an impossible act by loving me.
Bass-heavy, dreamlike, and full of sudden light, the song moves like water finding its path and allows one to see oneself clearly through another’s gaze while feeling safe.
The closing track, “Cut” circles back to self-sabotage and release. It’s fast, dizzy, and defiant and is a sonic spin through heartbreak and hesitation. It captures the momentum of the emotional messiness and that breathless attempt to stay upright while everything collapses.
The stories in daisy are specific but the emotions universal. Love, regret, and the strange ache of growing up. Leilani Patao doesn’t polish her pain but she edits it into something truthful. Each song feels like a small act of reclamation and a decision to share the unspoken and let it echo. It’s an EP that doesn’t just tell a story, it builds a world you can return to, again and again, until you find yourself in it.
EDITOR’S NOTE: artist stylises their name, album, and/or songs, in lowercase or uppercase letters
