Vancouver Indie Pop-Rock Artist Dust Cwaine Shares New Single + Video, “TWIN LAKES”
Vancouver drag performer and indie pop-rock musician Dust Cwaine unveils their deeply personal new single and video, “Twin Lakes,” the second release from their forthcoming album of the same name, due later this year.
Written by Dust and produced by Josh Eastman (Kylie V, Turunesh), “Twin Lakes” pulses with lo-fi urgency and raw emotion. The song channels the isolation of Dust’s rural upbringing in the Kootenays – a place known locally as Twin Lakes – and the complicated grief following the sudden passing of their father in 2020.
“I wrote this song about growing up in an isolated community, and the pain of being further isolated from the people within it,” said Dust. “I realized that in death, my father had bypassed any chance to be held accountable for the things he put me through. This song imagines what it might have been like to finally say what needed to be said.”
The result is a cathartic and hauntingly honest anthem, rooted in trauma but lit with the defiant spark of healing.
“‘I don’t want to go back’ was the core feeling,” Dust explains. “Josh built a beat that echoed through the chest – like you’re sitting alone by the lakes, reckoning with everything that made you.”
The striking video, directed by Luke Beach Brown, was filmed at the Britannia Mine Museum, pairing the song’s emotional depth with a moody, industrial backdrop that underscores the weight of the story.
Following the June release of their electric first single “Little Plans” – a joyful T4T synth-pop love song – “Twin Lakes” shows the other side of Dust’s forthcoming record: intimate, complex, and fearless in its vulnerability. The track marks the beginning of an album-long journey back to the place that shaped them – one that’s as much about self-love as it is survival.
With nearly a decade of experience, Dust Cwaine has become a fixture in Vancouver’s drag and music scenes, blending moody pop-rock textures with raw, confessional songwriting they call “nostalgia pop-rock navel gaze.” Their work has earned praise from Exclaim!, The Jann Arden Podcast, and The Georgia Straight, which named them a Vancouver Local Hero in 2024. They’ve shared stages with Hotel Mira and Young Friend, and have sold out headline shows across Canada.