Images provided by Whisper Doll
“Gratitude is such a strong theme. I’d like people to place themselves in a world that reminds them of everything good in their life and why they should be grateful.”
For Fiona Tagami, Lucky Clover is a record about finding beauty in the midst of becoming. Inspired by her cat Lucky and a newfound sense of independence, the album manifests gratitude while holding space for uncertainty, intimacy, and the search for belonging. Stepping into its world feels like sneaking into a park after hours—exhilarated by the unfamiliar, yet quietly aware of how lucky you are to be there. death of a rabbit sat down with the Whisper Doll frontwoman to discuss taking music seriously and recognizing the luck already blooming around her.
Whisper Doll’s new album, Lucky Clover, arrives October 2nd, 2026, via Take Care Records, with preorders available now. Their single “Sunsigns” is out September 8th.
DEATH OF A RABBIT: What inspired Lucky Clover, and how did you approach making something that was very dreamy but still grounded?
FIONA TAGAMI: Ooh, that’s a good question. The source of all inspiration is actually my cat Lucky. I have a really sweet cat that I adopted from a bodega around the time I was working on this record. The whole concept comes from a moment when I felt very grateful and lucky to be in New York working on music.
It took a lot of hard work to get to where I am now because I moved to the city five years ago, when I knew no one. It was a challenge to get acquainted with everything, figure out what I wanted to do, and identify the stories I wanted to tell. But when I was working on this record, I just felt really lucky all the time, and I wanted to express that with the title and the title track. I named my cat after that as well.
DOAR: Lucky Clover developed during a time when you felt truly lucky and hopeful. Could you elaborate on that period? Beyond your cat Lucky, what else would you consider a lucky clover in your life?
FIONA: I had just moved out of a kind of weird apartment situation and into this beautiful house in South Brooklyn. I also just graduated from school, and I was really living on my own in a lot of ways. I mean, I had seven roommates at this house, but I felt empowered. I felt inspired and grateful that I could stay in the city, do my own thing, and take being a musician as a career very seriously.
It’s also around the time I met Rob Glander, who’s the owner of our record label. He was hugely impactful in me deciding to take music seriously. I knew I was always going to do music, but I was a little bit nihilistic about its potential for me. He introduced me to a whole new way of looking at things and a whole new scene. He made me feel inspired and grateful, and he’s been a really big source of confidence and this feeling of luck.
The record itself is a lucky clover. It’s a manifestation of this feeling of gratitude. The music videos feel like a manifestation of gratitude as well—being able to work with the people I want to work with and make those visions come to life. Since I was gifted Lucky from the bodega, he feels like the ultimate manifestation.
DOAR: You’ve once described Whisper Doll’s world with the analogy of sneaking into a park after hours—the adrenaline combined with calm and quiet, and a darkness that is both unnerving and comforting. What world should listeners imagine while listening to Lucky Clover?
FIONA: Gratitude is such a strong theme. I’d like people to place themselves in a world that reminds them of everything good in their life and why they should be grateful. I guess the park is the best description I can come up with: a little bit of adrenaline, a little bit of feeling like you’re not supposed to be there, but really sitting in that feeling of being 16 again and being grateful to go on a new journey and experience things for the first time.
DOAR: Your track “Bluebells,” an ode to your home in Brooklyn, includes the lyrics: “Drying out / petals pressed onto pages, colors fade / Momentarily my heart stops beating / My veins turn grey.” What was your process for writing those lyrics, and how has your connection to nature shaped the song?
FIONA: Whenever I’m writing lyrics, it’s normally really late at night, from around one a.m. to four a.m. So sometimes it’s a bit of a blur, and I don’t remember exactly what the meaning behind things is or why I wrote them. But I tend to write a lot about nature, and that was reflected in the first record, Perfume Garden, as well.
When I’m writing, I like to think about visceral images—things that can really put a picture in someone’s mind. The idea of being pressed and compressed and under stress, like a petal between pages, and drying out and turning gray is a very visceral way to describe how I’ve felt sometimes. It’s really hard to live here on your own, being young and trying to make it work. It can feel like you’re being stretched thin, both physically and emotionally.
I don’t live in that house anymore, but when I did, I liked to keep at least one flower on my windowsill. I had a lot of roses there, so I was probably looking over at a rose and thinking about the petals drying when I wrote that lyric.
DOAR: I also wanted to ask about “Inside.” The song explores intimacy that is both emotional and physical. How do you think the current dating scene affects intimacy, and would you say the song explores platonic intimacy as well as romantic intimacy?
FIONA: That’s a really good question. I think it definitely explores both platonic and romantic intimacy. The current dating scene in New York is a little deep. I think it can be hard to find someone in your universe who’s looking for the same things as you.
This song is inspired by really wanting to understand someone and be understood—to kind of go inside their brain and comprehend how they feel. The concept was inspired by “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star: this idea of physicality, going into someone, and exploring their thoughts.
My thoughts on the dating scene are reflected in this song—just craving an actual deep connection with someone as opposed to quick intimacy or dating apps. Even with friends, it’s about longing to understand someone deeply. It’s so beautiful when you find someone you feel like you can understand and connect with. And I know, I want to know more. That’s what the song was inspired by, for sure.
DOAR: In “Am I a Knife?” you draw parallels between living inside a female body and a knife. Could you elaborate on the body becoming detached from the soul and your use of symbolic objects, including dolls and knives, to represent the self?
FIONA: Being a young woman on your own, moving to a big city, and really feeling sexualized or objectified for the first time by people you know or don’t know caused a lot of angst for me.
When I wrote that song, I was thinking about how it feels to be a woman getting blamed for men’s actions. Feeling like their lust for you, your body, or women in general is dangerous. There’s a lot of sexual shame in our generation, and when that shame is placed on women, it makes me really angsty. It’s disheartening and makes me feel like our bodies are sharp and dangerous, but also very powerful.
DOAR: In previous interviews, you’ve said that you wrote “So Sweet” after spending a week in the hospital following complications from surgery, and that everything seemed brighter and sweeter once you left the bland gray room. Why did “So Sweet” feel like the right closing track for Lucky Clover?
FIONA: I wrote “So Sweet” around 2022 or 2023. I had tonsillectomy surgery because I was constantly getting sick, and it affected my singing. My voice is my whole world; singing is my whole world. It was a really scary time because I had a pretty serious infection. I had to go back to the hospital and stay there for a while, and I kind of just potato’d out.
There, you don’t feel like you’re really alive. You’re just trying to get better in this grand, bland place, consuming a bunch of TV and being on your phone. When I got out, it reflected this concept of the lucky clover. Everything really did feel so much brighter, and I felt really alive and grateful to still have my voice and to have overcome those complications.
When the band plays shows, we normally end with “So Sweet.” It felt like a button to everything and kind of like a thesis statement for the album. It’s a slow, dreamy closer, which felt like a good fit.
DOAR: You moved to New York from your hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, while making the record. How did that move shape you, and what advice would you give artists considering a major move for their careers?
FIONA: I moved in 2021, around COVID, and the city was dying out a bit. We were still wearing masks. I was coming from having half of my junior and senior year in lockdown, and during that time, I grew very introspective. I think everyone who moved or went to school around the same time felt this huge need to get out there, meet people, and experience what we might have missed when we were 17 or 18.
My biggest advice is to go to as many things as possible. Try to find your people. If you’re a musician, go to a bunch of shows. Ask around to find the scenes and venues you like. If you’re an artist or a painter, go to galleries and exhibitions. Really get out there and try to meet people. You might find friends through Instagram or somewhere online, but for me, getting out there and going to events helped me find my people and my community.
DOAR: What’s a lyric you’ve enjoyed recently?
FIONA: The lyric that comes to mind right away is Mazzy Star’s “I want to hold the hand inside you” from “Fade Into You”. It’s a strange lyric that reveals itself as the song continues. It reflects a lot of the concepts I was writing about in our song “Inside”. Particularly as the lyric continues: “I look to you, and I see nothing; I look to you to see the truth.” It’s such a beautiful and sad way to express that longing for closeness and understanding.
Check out Whisper Doll’s newest single, “Sunsigns,” below!
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