Artist Spotlight is a segment that we started to introduce our readers to some deserving up and coming artists/bands. They have made an impact on us for all of the right reasons. We think they kick ass, and we hope you do too! Let’s shine the spotlight on the multi-rock based duo Death Valley Dream Cult!
Death Valley Dream Cult (DVDC) are an LA-based multi-rock duo poised to release a run of singles and videos that will set the foundation for the arrival their debut EP in 2026. Comprised of genre-disrupters Greta Janssen (23) and Nate Ascending (19), DVDC exists at the intersection of rebellion and reclamation, with a goal to strip away illusion and reveal something raw, human, and unapologetically real.
Death Valley Dream Cult aim to show the beauty in what is raw and real. Their music embraces contrast: light and dark, feminine and masculine, pain and blessings, coexisting rather than competing. What emerges is a sound and message rooted in honesty, agency, and self-trust.
Like many young artists coming up in Los Angeles, Greta and Nate began their journey through a familiar early-industry apprenticeship where access and opportunity were promised in exchange for control and profit. They quickly learned that the more control they surrendered, the harder it became to trust their own instincts. Walking away from that structure became the first real act of authorship.
Nate shares, “My whole identity was thrown away. He helped me create a new one, but it felt like it was his. And then I had to buy it back. But Greta helped me realize that everything I need is inside of me and that it always has and always will be. Then I was able to create from a place of joy, excitement, and genuine enthusiasm, rather than fear.”
Greta explains, “I was looking for someone to give me the answers, being an artist is a vulnerable thing. You are figuring out who you are and then how to sell it. The idea that someone could come along and tell you exactly how to do that. is very appealing. The reality is that it has to come from you. You’re the only person who knows who you are and everyone else is going to project onto you.”
Choosing a DIY path, DVDC sparked something larger than themselves. Around them, a growing underground community of young artists and creatives began to form, musicians, photographers, filmmakers, stylists, fashion designers, and visual artists merging talents and supporting one another outside traditional gatekeeping systems. Everyone is hands-on, ambitious, and deeply committed to their craft. The cult is real, and it is growing.
Following in the lineage of iconic LA rock bands they found clarity far from the city in the Mojave Desert’s Death Valley. There, removed from noise and expectation, they discovered something essential: their true voice.
That revelation lives at the core of their debut single, “Death of Creation.” Built around the mantra “Complacency is the death of creation,” the track serves as both warning and declaration. Produced and additional musical talents by London-based producer Tom Saint.
Greta and Nate see Death Valley Dream Cult as part of a larger movement, one that breathes new life into Hollywood’s golden age of rock & roll, when music and art poured out of every corner of the Sunset Strip, through Laurel Canyon, and down the streets of Hollywood decades before they were born. They are not resurrecting the past, they’re mutating it, forcing it to breathe again for a generation raised on algorithms and disillusionment.
Their sound lives in the collision zone between nostalgia and innovation: street-level grit with vintage accents. Influences span legends like The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Ozzy Osbourne, alongside modern disruptors including Bring Me The Horizon, Turnstile, and XXXTentacion.
The goal is simple, yet some might say radical: creating both music and a space for everyone to rise together, all the way to the top.
We sat down for a short, but fun Q&A with Greta and Nate from Death Valley Dream Cult.
Every superhero and villain have an origin, and a band is no different, minus the radioactive spiders and secret government experiments. What’s the origin of Death Valley Dream Cult?
Greta – My best friend is 1996 Playmate centerfold, Angel Boris. Her two sons used to play in a band with Nate called ‘Sweet Silver.’ I met Nate for the first time during the devastating fires that engulfed Los Angeles at the end of 2024. We were at a DIY jazz show turned clothing drive that some of the boys’ friends had organized. The moment I met Nate I knew he was special. He had a special little sparkle in his eye. I think you know a star when you meet one. At the time Nate and I were both working on albums for our own solo projects. Our dynamics with the producers we had been working with seemed to crash and burn right around the same time. I felt lost and hopeless. Like all of the blood sweat and tears I shed getting over the hump of believing in myself enough to start recording original music had been washed down the drain. Something in the back of my mind kept telling me to get in a session with Nate, so I reached out and we got together to write with no expectations attached. Nate and I connected over the similarities between what we had just experienced with our old producers. The first couple sessions were loose and pure. Things really kicked into gear when Tom Saint entered the picture. I met Tom at a Superbowl party in early 2024. He had received a check from PRS that he was not anticipating, and on a whim, booked a trip to Los Angeles. Tom has such a cool approach to making music, not only with his sound, but the way he prioritizes the people in a session. He believes that the second someone in the room feels unheard or stops having fun, you completely lose the vibe. This was so refreshing to Nate and I who had gotten used to emotionally heavy sessions and being made to feel inadequate. When Tom, Nate, and I got in a room together for the first time, we were all equals. We wrote and recorded “Death of Creation,” during our first session together, and that was the moment Death Valley Dream Cult was born.
Nate- Skateparks, the sunset strip (before 10 or I get kicked out of every bar), Laurel canyon guitar seshes, Motley Crue discography, Moshpitting to my friends emo bands, The desire for chaos contrasted with a love of poetry. Reading Poe on an autumn afternoon.
You recently released your debut song and video “Death of Creation.” Can you share the inspiration for the song and video?
Greta – The song was inspired by our lives of course. We had both been humbled by putting everything we had into creative partnerships that left us with nothing. Death of Creation is our reflection of that shared experience and marks the beginning of a new chapter. Writing this song meant standing up for ourselves, and backing our abilities 100%, regardless of who’s telling us who we should be, or what we should sound like. It is also an invitation to other young people who feel disenfranchised to also trust their gut instincts. Gut instincts exist to protect us, and when they go ignored, bad shit starts to happen. The video was thrown together. We had one idea for it that we were trying to materialize and we kept running into obstacles. I made the call to pivot our creative vision for it entirely. The second we decided we were just going to fill the car with our homies and drive out into Death Valley, everything started to just work. That’s how you know you’re onto a winner. I directed and edited with video with help from my good friend Daryl Gilmore who served as the DP. The whole video cost us about $200 to make. All our friends who came dripped out in their finest desert punk swag, also served as the crew, hopping in to hold reflectors and film BTS. The whole process was very intuitive and organic. We really just wanted viewers to feel like they were part of the ‘cult.’ It’s a bit of a fusion between what is typical for a rock video and a rap video. Nate and I are rockers but were also ill rappers. Death of Creation is more of a rock song, but we wanted to use the video as an opportunity to introduce the rap part of the identity as well. Maybe it’s foreshadowing the next single… I don’t know!
Nate- The song is a dramatic rebellion against the materialization of youth. I used to seek fame and idolize people who I thought would give me something I didn’t already have. But I was disillusioned and now I am regularly inspired by my own existence. I still have mentors but they’re just my friends now. Security cannot be bought, it must be experienced. I think the wreckage in the video illustrates a broken world where people don’t know what they believe in, and that we are fighting in the wasteland against the illusion of disempowerment.
You’ll be releasing more songs and videos in the coming months, leading to the release of your debut EP. Is there a theme to the songs and EP you can share with us.
Greta – Nate and I are much more interested in grey area subjects. Our music is heavy, but it’s heavenly. We are beautiful, but we’re so fucking ugly inside. We are hopeless romantics with violent tendencies. Male and female. It’s the dichotomy that we find so exciting. That’s where the study of the human condition gets interesting, and Nate and I are some young philosophers.
Nate- There are a few motifs that we come back to but overall the EP showcases Greta and my strong feelings about the state of the world, the pursuit of ecstasy and enlightenment, the emptiness of superficial love, and the importance of individual empowerment.
Tell us about the Cult.
Greta – We’re loosely practicing Taoism and hedonism. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that while your songs may be written about your own personal experiences, once they go out, it kinda has nothing to do with you anymore. The song becomes ‘theirs.’ It’s about the experience you give others when they hear it, and how it connects back to their lived experiences. The band is named after the audience. Full transparency, it’s always been for them, it’s always been about them. They are the cult. And it’s a cult with no leader. We are all equals, and we come together to make sense of life, create impactful art, and party really hard.
Nate- A place where there are no boundaries between us and the eternal, no limits on our individual power, no restrictions on our creativity, no fear of death or fear of anything. Only purpose and vitality. And that purpose is so different for everyone who chooses to join us. Everyone has a gift to contribute to the goodness of the world and the cult is where we nourish and embrace those gifts. Abiding by the sacred unspoken law of the TAO, there are no mistakes because there is no agenda. Apart from the agenda to eat burritos and listen to the stones. We are already God experiencing itself.
When were you bit by the music bug? How has music, your own and from other artists, impacted you?
Greta – I’ve always been plagued by the urge. My dad plays guitar, sings and writes songs. He was always playing old sad country songs (his favorite is George Jones) on his acoustic and would make me stay up late with him, running three part harmonies with my older sister until we were tight. I love country standards, especially the harmonies. When I was 7 years old, I started singing with the children’s choir at the DiCapo Opera Theater on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. We would do vaudeville and our yearly Christmas carol show, but what was really special, was when we got to be in the operas with the grown ups. I got to do regional tours and perform at Lincoln Center before the age of 14, to Puccini’s masterpiece, Tosca. I grew up in Brookly, NY, and as a listener, rap music consumed me from an early age. The first rappers that really resonated with me were Bobby Shmurda, Yung Lean, and A$AP Rocky. In around 2015 SoundCloud rap took over my milieu. I had a short lived stint as a SoundCloud rapper going by the name, GRETA. I never expected to ever start rapping again because I’m a white girl and I convinced myself it was really cringe for me to be a rapper, but that all changed when I met Nate and Tom, who both also happened to have hidden SoundCloud pasts. My punk phase hit me hard when I was in college in upstate NY. I discovered The Ramones, The Minutemen, The Replacements, Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Descendents. It was a whirlwind of mostly 80s hardcore that escalated into some of the heaviest most unlistenable music I could find, genres with names that sound like warnings, power violence, grindcore. Eventually I missed musicality enough that I was launched back into the mainstream. I got really into rock music from the 60s and 70s which my dad raised me on, The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Floyd: the greats. Then my taste followed the progression of time, I hopped on the hair metal to grunge to nu metal pipeline. Grunge music especially stuck with me: Alice in Chains, Nirvana, Soundgarden. I’ve only just recently gotten into electronic music probably due to Tom’s influence. Electronic music is king in Europe and ever since we started working with Tom we’ve been experimenting a lot in that direction. I also was working for a while with Scott Humphrey, who produced all of Rob Zombies hits, amongst other kickass music. His style of production really inspired me. His beats just go so hard and are perfectly constructed chaos. He introduced me to modular synthesizers which I hope to investigate more once I can afford them! Right now I’ve got my eye on 2hollis, EsDeekid, fakemink, and The Hellp.
Nate- I’ve been overwhelmed with an obsession for music ever since I heard “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” by Green Day when I was seven. It wasn’t until I was thirteen when I started to dive deeply into the discography of my inspirations as an artistic pursuit and at the time it was mostly rap. XXXtentacion was my first true idol. My first concert at fourteen kickstarted my love for chaos. That was also my first mosh pit. I started rapping until I picked up the guitar and fell in love with Hendrix. I started my first band in my homies garage and it was sick. The rest developed naturally.
If you could put together a fantasy all-star jam to perform with, who would you pick? They can be artists who are still with us or not.
Greta – On drums we have my buddy Stephen Perkins from Jane’s Addiction, of course, Phil Collins, and honestly, fuck it, I love Tommy Lee, let’s get him in there too. Gotta agree with Nate about Bass, obviously it’s gotta be Flea, no question. Guitar we got Eric Clapton, Johnny Marr and Jerry Cantrell. Liam Howlett on synth, Elton FUCKIN John on keys and Vox. And I guess let’s throw in a couple vocalists, we got Mick Jagger, Die Antwoord (not sure how they fit in but they will figure it out), Etta James, Donny Hathaway, EsDeeKid, Marilyn Manson, and Oli Sykes.
Nate- Gotta start with the rhythm section: Hendrix, and Keith Richards on guitar. Flea on bass. Joey Jordison and John Bonham on drums. Vernon Reed and David Gilmore on lead guitar. For vocals I’d have Michael Jackson, Bonnie Raitt, Layne Staley and Albert King singing backup and taking solos. Then XXXtentacion and Juice World freestyle rapping. Scott Page on the sax.
If DVDC was a cocktail what would be in it?
Greta – Love. Obviously. Probably some bottom shelf tequila, let’s say Jose Cuervo, for a good time. Cranberry juice, because it’s nice and tart and prevents UTIs. A little umbrella, to elevate the user experience.
Nate- I don’t drink right now, and I don’t know if I’ve ever had a cocktail but definitely Jack. Maybe some ginger and honey. Smokey for sure. And topped with a Dragonfruit.
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