One woman. One dream. One resignation. One EP.

After about a year of making this thing, I can finally say it: Kao neko ko se voli is coming out on 15 October.

I still can’t quite believe it.

The EP started, as many good stories do, with me having a mild existential crisis and thinking: “What the hell am I doing with my life?”

For most of my life, I’ve found myself moving between different worlds, scenes, jobs, projects and versions of myself. I was always making something, always working on something, always somewhere in between. But last year, I finally decided to pull the plug on the whole “I’ll get around to it eventually” thing.

I quit my job. I bit the bullet. And I decided I was going to make the damn record.

It actually started with Jane.

Then came Nedelja. Then Uspavanka za odrasle. Then Znam. Then Basma. Somewhere along the way, five songs became five videos, and a collection of songs slowly started becoming an actual world.

But the EP really began with a heated conversation.

A not-so-well-intentioned acquaintance asked me, essentially, why I wasn’t already “known”, why I wasn’t doing more with my music, and what I was even doing with all that supposed talent.

It annoyed me. Obviously.

But underneath the annoyance was a tiny, very inconvenient question:

Okay. What if I actually did something about it?

So I decided to stop waiting for the right person to magically appear and help me do all the things I had been trying to figure out alone.

For years, I’d been looking for a producer. I’d spent a lot of time navigating a fragmented music scene, trying to understand who does what, who to talk to, where to go, how any of this actually works.

And as a lifelong high achiever with a pathological relationship to doing everything myself, I had to learn something deeply uncomfortable:

Maybe I don’t have to do everything myself.

So I put it out there. Literally. I remember thinking, okay, universe, please send me someone I can actually work with.

And then, low and behold, the very next day, an Instagram ad appeared on my feed for Fantazma Studio, offering a particular kind of collaboration with up-and-coming musicians.

It sounded almost too good to be true.

Naturally, I did some digging. I couldn’t find anything suspicious, so I thought: screw it. I shot my shot and sent that DM.

The rest is history.

Or, more accurately, the EP. And the band.

Alex and I started working together, the songs slowly found their shape, and somewhere along the way Dea & the Dreams came into existence too.

And now, after a year of writing, recording, overthinking, filming, rehearsing, making things up as I go, and generally refusing to leave this project alone, Kao neko ko se voli is finally coming into the world.

Five songs you may already know.

Two new ones waiting for you.

15.10.

I genuinely cannot freaking wait. And somewhere in all of this, I proved something to myself: that I really can be someone who behaves like a person who loves herself.

I did this damn thing.

Every indie kid needs their Dreams.

So, naturally, I got myself some.

I’d been playing these songs alone for a while, but at some point it became pretty obvious that they wanted to be louder. So in March, I gathered three very talented humans in a room and Dea & the Dreams was born.

Alexander Vujić Ohlsen plays bass, produces my music, and generally knows what to do when the rest of us are staring at an amplifier like it’s going to explain itself. He’s also the man behind the production of my EP, btw.

Tamara Jeličić plays lead guitar and sings some of the pretty bits. She’s been involved in the indie scene, playing in bands such as Francis Ka and Neoneboder, which means she has considerably more cool-girl guitar credentials than I do.

Aleksandra Terić plays drums, is one of the coolest heads in Belgrade, and has been in more bands than I know what to count. For now, imma say Bolesna Štenad and Francis Ka. She is, quite literally, the reason these songs have a heartbeat.

And then there’s me — Dea. Vocals, not so much of a great rhythm guitarist, more vibes and feelings, questionable ideas, and the occasional “wait, what if we tried this?”

We’ve been rehearsing since March, slowly turning my little indie songs into a proper four-person creature. There have been cables. There have been very serious discussions about guitar tones. There have probably been too many beers.

And now the Dreams are ready to leave the rehearsal room.

First shows are coming. Come meet my Dreams. They’re lovely. ♡