dodie’s new album Not For Lack Of Trying captures a decade of navigating life in fragments, turning heartbreak, depression, and fleeting moments of joy into delicate reflections that feel both raw and refined. “I have only been able to deal with parts of life in bite-size pieces,” she says. “These songs are packaged reflections of those pieces, exploring heartbreak, yearning for meaning, and joy amidst depression.”

Written between London and Los Angeles, the album was produced with longtime collaborator Joe Rubel, whose work with Maisie Peters, Griff, and Sigrid helped shape its textured intimacy. At its core, the album is the natural continuation of dodie’s acclaimed 2021 debut Build A Problem, which landed at No. 3 on the UK chart. Like its predecessor, it balances vulnerability with quiet strength, but this time the songs feel stitched together by a harder-won clarity.

That clarity didn’t come easily. Nearing the end of the writing process, dodie still searched for a thread that tied the songs together until the title itself provided the breakthrough. “Not For Lack Of Trying is so simple, so sad and it really painted this picture of all these songs, of me trying to figure it out,” she explains. From that realization came the pensive title track, a closing statement where she sings, “Lend me joy I can’t see mine / But not for lack of trying.”

“It was one of those songs that feels like it’s already written, so you’re trying to find it,” she says of the final piece. That patience is something dodie has come to embrace. “I think I’ve finally learned now that the way I write is just very different. I just need to have so much more patience with myself, it just takes the time that it takes.”

With Not For Lack Of Trying, dodie delivers not answers, but an honest portrait of someone searching for them, offering her listeners a record that feels as healing as it does heart-rending.