Fully immersed in the world of music from a young age, Maya June Dwyer plans to release her first album with her partner Youssef Nassar in the upcoming year.
A local to Syracuse, NY, Dwyer grew up watching her parents Thomas Dwyer and Kathleen Harrington perform in a punk rock band. Laughing as she spoke, Dwyer fondly recalled photos of her mother playing basement concerts while pregnant and explained that her sonogram even served as the album art for one of the band’s CDs. Both carried a passion for music that they passed on to their daughter.
A singer from a young age, Dwyer has always been interested in creating music. She even admitted to writing songs on the piano in high school that she never dared to show anyone. A self taught musician, her desire to create gave her the motivation to learn many instruments including the violin, the piano, and the accordion.
After much thought, and a year at Onondaga Community College as a vocal performance major, Dwyer began to focus her creative energy towards a more interdisciplinary artform. Attending a dance and creative incubation program in Montréal in 2023, she was working on a solo dance piece when she met her future music partner Youssef Nassar.
A similar story to Dwyer, Nassar came from a self-proclaimed artsy family. He was a cinematographer by trade until developing an interest in music production. Originally from Lebanon, he left after the 2020 Beirut explosion and eventually moved to Montréal to work as a freelance photographer/cinematographer and sound designer.
The two musicians met by chance after Dwyer accidentally discovered that Nassar was a music producer and asked him to help her with a sound track she had begun to compose for a solo dance work. Looking back on their first creative collaboration, Dwyer described Nassar as the “missing piece needed to take it to completion.”
After creating the last third of the dance track together, Dwyer could not shake the feeling that she and Nassar were meant to be a duo. Maya’s father, who had passed away only six months prior to her Montréal trip, had always wanted her to pursue music in a more intense way, and with Nassar’s encouragement she began to do just that.
Having met in Montréal, it’s no shock that both Dwyer and Nassar had experience with the French language. ‘Dans la lune’ is a French expression translating to ‘in the moon,’ similar to the English phrase ‘ to have one’s head in the clouds.’ After hearing stories of a younger Nassar consistently being told that his head was always dans la lune, Dwyer could not help but relate to the statement. To Dwyer the expression meant “being carried away in your imagination and creativity, and having an escape into your mind and your art.” The two musicians felt as if there were loners in their imagination, but that was not necessarily a bad thing to them. They decided that the perfect name for their newly formed duo should represent them as musicians: Dans La Lune.
Both musicians draw on their current emotional space when it comes to creating. Prior to the EP, Dans La Lune released their song “Lullaby Love” as a single in April of 2023. This was the first song the duo really wrote together, with Dwyer calling the song an “inexplicable track.” Dwyer and Nassar set a release date for the song before it was finished to help encourage them to write, with the first verse being the last piece of the song to be finalized. Spontaneously creating something to fill the time, the two eventually fell in love with their choice, which inadvertently created the framework for the album.
Inspired by their recently discovered creative connection and a desire to embrace the music, Dwyer says that the song is “exactly what Montréal sounds like to [her].” While the song may not contain many parts that are easy to sing along to, the song is a self-proclaimed “authentic representation of [Dwyer’s and Nassar’s] true skills and styles.”
Working so closely together has also led to countless moments of being able to discover each other’s talents. Looking back on the process, Dwyer fondly remembers sitting closely with Nassar on a synthesizer trying to create a specific sound they were looking for.
Living in different cities can sometimes make it challenging for the duo to work in-person together on the album. While they continue to work, Dwyer confessed that they were interested in finding a record label to assist them with releasing the finalized album. She said it was a weird world for music right now, expressing concern over the pressure to go ‘viral’.
While it may be Dwyer’s first experience releasing an EP, Nassar is no stranger to the process, having released albums previously on his own. In addition to co-writing the music with Nassar, Dwyer has been learning how to produce music as well, calling the process fun, exciting, and magical. Even though it may be exciting, she says a huge part of the process has been allowing herself to be more comfortable with trying new things and making mistakes. This willingness to be vulnerable has allowed her to develop the endurance to not give up on ideas as she creates for the album. Dwyer never intended to be a singer and experienced some doubts when it came to putting herself out there in parts of the music.
One notable moment she recalled was recording a specific vocal run for “Lullaby Love”. Dwyer admits to getting in her own head about the moment, but is forever thankful that Nassar encouraged her to record anyway as it has become one of their favorite moments in the whole album.
When asked about the group’s sound Dwyer could not help but laugh. She claimed that it was something that they really struggled with, saying “we were such babies, we were so new!” She eventually settled on describing them as an indie-electronic duo. Drawing inspiration from a blend of electronic and live music, they are able to achieve a witchy, folkloric, funk groove. Leaning more into the club side of music, she was excited to start writing more disco and techno tracks.
Picturing things as very story based, their EP “Deep Blue Sea” transports listeners to different elemental zones, with each zone having its own distinct sound. The full album, which will be released early 2025, begins underwater before shifting to become more earthy and forestry. The album will end in space, surrounded by disco tech vibes and the planets.
Dwyer and Nassar were inspired by their connection and quickly realized the important role those personal connections have in life. The title track “Deep Blue Sea” will act as the first song in the full album, starting the story lost and floating in the sea before eventually finding that connection needed for survival.
Having grown up in Lebanon, and having family still there, the theme of connection is especially strong to Nassar. The pair hold onto the vision that the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon can someday end. The album is not meant to be a political response, instead focusing on “the experience of the universe right now.” Dwyer explained that the music was a response to human issues and empathy being politicized, and the ways those issues intersected with them personally.
At the same time they are experienceing so much connection and love, they are also experiencing and witnessing genocide with personal implications. Although the album is intended to elicit an emotional reaction from its listener, Dwyer laughed as she insisted that the whole album was not all “doom and gloom.” The EP and the album are products of the present, with Dwyer explaining “we cannot help but create this now.”
