Reconcile through music.
Daniela AndradeHonduran-Canadian musician and songwriter, announced the release of her debut album, Ode. She has been in the public eye since she went viral on YouTube by uploading covers of some of her favorite songs. However, although he managed to consolidate a solid audience, he always maintained the desire to release his own music. Now, in 2026, that dream becomes a reality with his first full-length, dedicated to his mother. Regarding the release, we spoke with the artist about her maternal bond, the aesthetics of the album and the importance of conceiving its composition in two languages.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: We know your past on YouTube but, in reality, where does the concern to start making a musical project come from?
Daniela Andrade: Music for me always had a very special meaning; It has been like a medicine, a place where I can unite different feelings. I have had that concern since I was a child. I started writing my own songs when I was 12 years old. Music has always been there, it never left. YouTube gave me an audience, but life gave me this path in music.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: Has the voice always been your main instrument?
Daniela Andrade: Yes, exactly. I started singing when I was six years old. In my family they have always sung; My dad was a choir director and he taught my brothers and me how to harmonize. From there the idea was born that my body, my voice, was my first instrument. But when I discovered the guitar it was very exciting. It took me a lot of practice to be able to sing and play guitar at the same time.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: You come from singles that were sometimes grouped into EPs. What was it like going from that to your first full-length?
Daniela Andrade: With my last two EPs I was trying to find within myself what I wanted to say. That gave me a very strong desire to continue writing in Spanish and English. I have always carried that legacy of my family in my music. Ode It represents the next chapter for me. It has to do with the bond between my mother and me, with growing up, becoming a woman, with my experience as a woman.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: Ode It is a material that excites us because it has a whole story behind it. This album takes the bond with your mother as its main axis, what can you tell us about this?
Daniela Andrade: When I was exploring what I wanted to say in this album—which is never clear from the beginning, because the project itself teaches you what it wants to come out—I realized that it was a lot of emotions. Like when you keep an emotion to yourself: suppress, contain… many contained emotions.
The color red was a north for me, because I feel many things when I see it: passion, anger, vulnerability.
That led me to explore different topics. I kept hearing stories in my mind that were connected to my mother: things she had told me, things I had observed. I wanted to revisit our relationship, but seeing her not only as my mother, but as a woman who was also a daughter, a girl, who grew up in Honduras, in a town, and ask myself how she came to be my mother.
I started asking a lot of questions and having conversations to get to know her again. In that process I got to know parts of myself. There's a voice note where she explains how she feels anger, and I realized that we feel it the same way: as pent-up emotions, with a desire to come out and express itself. I was very impressed by how life runs in parallel. Although we are from different places—she was born in Honduras and I was born in Canada—she has taught me so much. There is a very strong legacy in me thanks to her.
This album has taught me a lot. It is a process that continues, but it has profoundly transformed me.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: While listening to your album I thought about the movie Ladybird. There is a moment in life when we can see our mother as an independent woman, with her own context, who does what she can with the tools she has to exercise her motherhood.
Daniela Andrade: I love that example of Ladybird. When I saw that movie I also cried a lot, especially at the call at the end. It says so much… Yes, I love that reference.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: Is it also a reconciliation process? Does the album go that way?
Daniela Andrade: Of course, it is one hundred percent reconciliation. Reconciling parts of me, but also such an important relationship. I love my mother very much and we have had different stages in our relationship. In the end, choosing love, patience and understanding between us has truly given me a lot of peace.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: About the process of OdeHow much were you involved in the artistic decisions?
Daniela Andrade: Lot. I am very involved in all the decisions because I am an independent artist and I work under my own label, together with my manager, Jeff. He tracklist It's very intentional, from start to finish. I wanted to open with my mother's voice. I also included details like steps and doors, because I wanted to integrate this idea that conversations are portals: opening one door and closing another. We never enter a room the same way we leave it.
I produced a lot of the album and was an executive producer. I worked with very generous and talented collaborators in Toronto and Montreal, but I took many ideas to the end. I was even involved in the creative direction of the cover. With this album, because it was so personal, I felt like I had to make all the decisions.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: Returning to the color red on the cover, it is a color that can represent blood, pain and also love. Is there that duality on the album?
Daniela Andrade: Yes, it's even in the lyrics. In the second song I say: “Now grown up, now love, with red ink it stands out, runs on my lips, laughter and pain, flower in spring that sings.”
Red carries that duality: passion and pain. I connect a lot with that and I wanted to capture it on the album.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: The letters in Spanish have an important weight. Is there something political behind that decision?
Daniela Andrade: Everything is tinged with something political, even the language. My parents taught me Spanish with great intention. I have an accent that I don't really know how to describe, because they taught me neutral Spanish. When I go to Honduras, my cousins speak differently; in Canada, my Salvadoran, Colombian or Argentine friends too. They always asked me where I was from.
My dad became more integrated into English because he was looking for a job and wanted to sound professional on calls; He is an entrepreneur and has his business. My mom stayed more within the Latin community and always spoke to me in Spanish. That's how that duality was born in me: at home I was Spanish, at school I was English.
It took me years to understand how important Spanish was to me, because I was trying to assimilate more in Canada. When I wrote my first song in Spanish, it came out very quickly and felt natural. There I understood that I had many emotions that needed that language. I now fully accept that I am bilingual. Sometimes the first word that comes up is in English, sometimes in Spanish. And that's fine.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: The album will be out on March 6. Is there a song that moves you the most?
Daniela Andrade: I'm very excited that people are listening. “Ode”. When I listen to it I feel many things. When I listened to it with my mother, she was also excited, and I was surprised that we both liked the same song so much.
And if I can choose another one, it would be ““À volonté”the last one. I wrote it feeling a lot of love, and that is transmitted.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: How did your mother react when you showed her the album?
Daniela Andrade: It was very special. For years there was a certain distance because I wrote more in English and she doesn't fully understand it. When we listen to the album together, starting with her voice and then the song “Mother”we feel a lot of emotions. If I didn't understand something, I would stop the song and ask myself. We cry, we hug each other. He was the only one listening party that I needed. After that, everything is a plus.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: How will you present this album live?
Daniela Andrade: The first dates of the tour have already been announced. The show will be very special because the band is made up of very close friends and collaborators. I'm working a lot on the details of the scenario to integrate symbolic elements of Ode. I don't want to give too much away, but I'm very excited.
Indie Rocks! Magazine: What message do you invite to listen to the album?
Daniela Andrade: I think conversations are essential. They are an opportunity to understand each other with patience and love. That is the intention of this project.
And if I could ask for anything, it would be that they listen to it from beginning to end. I designed it like this, with a lot of love. I am very grateful that you listen to it.Dale play to “steer” part of debut album Ode of Daniela Andrade here.
