Inside Your Cool Gay Sister’s Room: Déyyess Live At The Lower Third

Words and images by Noémie Blue

Below a cocktail bar on London’s busy Denmark Street, a stage has been decorated with homemade cotton ball clouds and tinfoil stars. It feels like an end-of-term celebration, a garden party, or like we’ve all piled inside our cool older sister’s bedroom to discuss our latest school infatuation. In this intimate setting, we are welcomed into Déyyess’ world.

The stars come out for Déyyess at the Lower Third

Originally from Canterbury, Kent, the young singer-songwriter grew an audience after posting reels captioned with viral stories of her unrequited crushes to snippets of her songs, inspired by My Bloody Valentine and Lady Gaga. The viral videos amassed millions of views on Instagram. Undoubtedly, this is how most of her fans tonight have found her, their algorithm leading them to this queer girl side of the Internet.

She has just dropped her debut EP, ‘Claire’ and is impatient to finally connect with her online audience in the flesh at her first (sold-out!) headline show. “I can’t believe you’re all here,” she says. “I feel like you’ve all existed online for so long, and now you’re all here. I’m so happy I found you, and you found me, and we all get to be in a room together.”

She echoes this sentiment when we meet her after the show. She tells LDN she has been making music for the past seven years, and it feels great to finally connect with fans who have seemingly gone through similar crushing scenarios.

“You’ve all existed online for so long, and now you’re all here”

Occupying the 250-capacity venue is a quiet and gentle crowd, with a curious mix of pop-culture inclined teenagers, and middle-aged music-lovers at the back of the room. The opening act is Bluegirl, Déyyess’ friend, her co-writer and producer, who sets the tone in-between her Lorde-like love songs on the guitar: “Are we feeling good? Are we feeling gay?” she asks as she coaxes the crowd into dancing with her rendition of Chappell Roan’s ‘HOT TO GO!’. We are warmed up and ready for the rest of the evening.

After a playlist of carefully selected gay pop anthems, from MUNA’s ‘Silk Chiffon’ to Clairo’s ‘Bags’, Déyyess nervously takes to the stage, under pink and blue lights. Dressed in a short black dress and with a bold silver star hanging from her neck, she is the image of a shy and sulky bedroom-pop darling. Her iridescent eyeshadow matches her guitar (she later tells us her sister did her makeup for the occasion). It’s official: we have stepped inside her EP cover art.

The woozy, starry cover art for the Claire EP

She symbolically opens with ‘Cherry Pie (i think i love you)’, the first song she released on Spotify at the end of 2023, and goes on to play the entirety of her discography, blending pop and electronic, for the lucky fans filling up the room, as well as a new unreleased song, ‘Better Than Me’. The crowd sings along to the melancholic ‘if i was ur boy’, as Déyyess excitedly dances with her band members, and by the time ‘love u (from afar)’ starts playing, every one in the room is smiling through the heartbreaking lyrics.

Towards the end of the performance, the artist’s phone suddenly rings loudly. She rushes off stage to pick up the call, and a girl’s voice on the other end of the line echoes through the speakers for the entire room to hear the news of the breakup. Now we’re all paying attention and Déyyess comes back to play her biggest song, ‘Claire’ which, like her other songs, centres around a female lover refusing to commit and repeatedly going back to men.

Reframing the sound of shoegaze and queer love songs

“A night that feels like a queer prom, bridging the gap from an online presence to the real world”

After the show, fans line up at the merch stand to take pictures and exchange bracelets with their new favourite alt-pop girl. A young woman dressed in a lacy dress shyly tells us she has flown in by herself from Berlin especially for the night and is looking for queer clubs around where she can prolong the evening. The singer is handing out pink envelopes, sealed with a lipstick kiss. Inside is a handwritten thank you note. She also becomes agony aunt for the night as her teenage fans ask for advice regarding their friend’s relationship issues, and their own unrequited crushes.

Déyyess’ handwritten thank you note to fans, sealed with a lipstick kiss

With this ode to the flourishing lesbian pop music scene, and a night that feels like a queer prom, Déyyess has successfully bridged the gap from an online presence to the real world. We have witnessed the special performance of an artist who is one to watch.

Watch the video for Claire here: