ZZZAHARA AND FAERYBABYY BRING THEIR BEAUTIFULLY BRUISED POP TO THREE LINKS
Two artists who have learned how to make heartbreak sound strangely inviting meet in Deep Ellum on October 16.
– JAMBALOO EDITORIAL TEAM
There is a particular kind of guitar music currently living somewhere between shoegaze, post-punk, bedroom pop and the half-remembered soundtrack of being miserable in your twenties, and few artists understand its appeal quite as instinctively as zzzahara and Faerybabyy. On Friday, October 16, the pair bring their co-headlining run to Three Links, a room small enough that all of that fuzz, distortion and emotional oversharing should feel considerably less distant than it does through a pair of headphones.
For zzzahara, the Dallas date arrives behind Distant Lands, their fourth album and one of their most personal records yet. The Los Angeles songwriter built it around memory, grief and the strange ways the past continues to interfere with the present, inspired partly by dreams in which they found themselves speaking with a brother who died when they were young. Musically, however, the record rarely announces that weight directly. Songs such as “Speed Racer,” “She Doesn’t Want Me To Exist” and “My Little Dove” bury complicated feelings beneath distorted guitars, bright melodies and the kind of hazy production that makes sadness sound almost warm.
Faerybabyy approaches roughly the same emotional territory from a more mischievous direction. Payton Morse grew up in Texas listening to old country with her grandfather before eventually finding The Cure, The Smiths, punk and new wave, and there is still something wonderfully mismatched about her music: deep, almost deadpan vocals sitting against jangling guitars while the lyrics veer between romantic obsession, self-destruction and very dark jokes. As Morse once described it herself, the formula is essentially “happy guitars” paired with considerably less happy subject matter.
She has also been releasing music at a remarkable pace. After 2025’s Jabbermouth and Vacation EP, 2026 has already brought a run of singles including “call my ex,” “knucklehead,” “tough luck,” “is it true?” and, most recently, “lakeside,” released September 2.
More importantly, this does not feel like two vaguely compatible artists being thrown onto the same tour poster. Zzzahara and Faerybabyy are friends and collaborators who have already made music together, including 2025’s “cigarette song” and “good luck.” Zzzahara has said they generally avoid collaborating with people unless a friendship exists first, recalling that “cigarette song” began almost immediately after the pair met and started hanging out together.
That connection should make Three Links the right size of room for this particular pairing. Both artists make music that can initially feel casual and lo-fi, but the closer you get to it, the more carefully constructed — and emotionally messy — it becomes.
