Dessa Uses Mythology, Whiskey to Pen 'The Beekeeper' Epic -- Song Premiere

Posted on Sep 28th 2011 11:00AM by Dan Reilly
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Kai Benson

Dessa is an artist you should remember. The Minneapolis singer and rapper combines the versatile, eclectic style of Tom Waits with a voice that can switch from tender to tough at the drop of a hi-hat. A part of the city's Doomtree collective (the same group that gave us Wugazi, the Fugazi/Wu-Tang Clan mashup), Dessa's growing popularity has brought about the release of 'Castor, the Twin,' an album that features reworkings of 10 of her older tracks and the brand new song 'The Beekeeper.'

"Writing the 'The Beekeeper' was a little bit like trying to write a myth," Dessa tells Spinner. "I knew I wanted expansive lyrics; I wanted something epic, a subject that could support a dramatic piano line and layers of swooping strings. I tried to imagine what humanity might look like from afar: Sort of an ant-farm perspective on the way we work and love and live our lives. I made a few glancing references to Greek figures (Prometheus and the like), but the song really centers around the character of a beekeeper.

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Listen to Dessa's 'The Beekeper'

"I imagined a tall and slender woman in a netted dress, armed with a pitcher full of smoke, who offers the comfort of sleep to the humans in the song, in the same way that beekeepers smoke their hives to sedate the bees during the collection of honey."

As Dessa admits, the powerful, dramatic track forced her to step up her songwriting game and could lead to even more musical and lyrical departures on her upcoming work.

"I write a lot of breakup songs, so the large scope of this one was challenging -- lots of drafts, lots of cursing, lots of whiskey breaks," she says. "But I'm proud of the result. I think 'The Beekeeper' has reinvigorated me as a student -- I want to learn more history, more science, more myth, so that I might eventually draw from those sources to write better, stranger, more interesting songs."

'Castor, the Twin' is due out Oct. 4 via Doomtree.

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