Josie Dunne

Josie Dunne crafts hook-driven pop songs whose rhythms bubble with the same lively energy as their melodies, all delivered through a voice carrying distinct soul. Her vivid and stylish approach emerged completely on the debut single “Old School” in 2018, after which she sharpened the approach across a string of energetic follow-up releases the following year, among them the streaming successes “Ooh La La” and the Matoma-assisted “Sunday Morning.” The bulk of those tracks appeared together on the 2020 EP Late/Teen Early Twenties, which foreshadowed the larger scope she would pursue on Tennis, the album she began issuing one track at a time across 2021 and 2022.

Born in La Grange, Illinois, Dunne started singing publicly while still in middle school. Throughout high school she played frequent sets at bars and restaurants across the Chicago region. Warner/Chappell offered her a publishing contract in 2014, after which she balanced classes with periodic trips to Nashville for writing sessions. She eventually moved to Nashville full-time and signed with Atlantic, which put out “Old School” in early 2018; the EP To Be the Little Fish arrived later the same year. She also joined Norwegian producer Matoma on the energetic dance/soul cut “Sunday Morning,” a streaming success that expanded her reach considerably. Dunne kept releasing singles steadily through 2019, scoring notable traction with “Same” and “Ooh La La,” both later included on Late Teens/Early Twenties...Stay the Way I Left You, the EP anchored by her duet with Dahl on the title track.

Following the late-2020 seasonal release “Holidays” and the quick arrival of the Two Friends collaboration “Last Day,” Dunne stepped away from major-label affiliation in 2021 to launch the expansive Tennis project. She rolled out the album gradually over many months in 2021 and 2022, presenting each installment as an “Episode” and occasionally compiling the tracks into interim EPs.