Carolyn Dodd’s “Us” feels like ripping the bandage off a wound slowly because sometimes you want it to sting. It’s alt-pop with country edges, bright on the surface but damn near feral underneath. And if you’ve ever been left behind by someone who rewrote the whole story just to make themselves the hero, this one’s going to hit a little too close.
She grew up in Louisville, cutting her teeth on small theater stages like Derby Dinner Playhouse and Center Stage, and you can hear it in the way she delivers every line. She moved to L.A., chased acting, landed a role in Get Shorty—alongside Chris O’Dowd and Ray Romano—but it’s music where the blood really pools. She’s been writing songs since she was seven. That kind of early hunger doesn’t fade. It ferments.
“Us” starts with a cold smile: “I think I’m taller since I saw you last / I left the pictures, kept you in the past.” She’s not crying. She’s measuring how much space a friend who ghosted her used to take up and realizing how much taller she stands without that person dragging her down. That lyric sizes up the relationship and she moves on. Or pretends to.
Because underneath that confidence, she’s still fucking haunted. “And I hope that you talk about it / Say you did something right / And when you dream about it / I hope it stings at night.” While other girls in this situation might seek closure, Carolyn wants consequences. She wants her voice voice heard on loop, and it sounds unforgiving, like the kind of guilt you can’t scrub clean from your skin.
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There’s nothing subtle about the line—“You’re reusing others, filling unfillable voids”—That’s surgical. That’s a woman who watched them jump from body to body, trying to find something that felt like friendship, but never stayed long enough to earn it. I’ve known that person. You probably have too. The one who mimics connection just long enough to take what they need. Carolyn calls their bluff with a melody wrapped in barbed wire.
The production keeps things moving—alt-pop with tempo, shimmer, and sharpness. Fans of Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams will feel right at home—same emotional bloodline, but Carolyn cuts deeper, and the lyrics do all the bleeding. “I see you smaller now when I think back / You care for others just to say you had.” That’s what happens when the spell wears off. You stop romanticizing the damage. You realize that relationship wasn’t complicated. They were just was careless. And worse, proud of it.
Even when she sings “Can’t open up about it / Your new friends hate my guts / But I know you think about it / I know you think of us,” she’s not being desperate and she’s not waiting for an apology because she already knows she lives rent-free in the space between their lies and late-night spirals.
Carolyn’s voice doesn’t strain. She doesn’t belt. She presses. There’s a jagged edge is how she phrases each line, like she’s dragging her nails across skin just to make sure her nerve endings still work. This is grief that bites. Grief with red lips and a quiet grudge. Nothing passive here.
And then that final gut punch: “You can fool the world / But you can’t fool me, or who you were.” That lyric deserves a pause because we’ve all watched someone morph into a version of themselves designed for public approval. New friends. New clothes. New morals (think Avril Lavigne’s ‘Complicated.) But that version never erases the one who cried on your shoulder and shared all the good times with you. You don’t get to pretend that version never existed. Not when Carolyn’s still singing about it like the scar is fresh.
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The video goes full femme fatale fantasy. Leather. Restraint. Revenge. Carolyn kidnaps this former friend, tortures her like a dominatrix on a vendetta, and you can’t even be shocked. You’ve fantasized about it. Maybe not that exact scene, but the power. The reclamation. The moment you stop being the victim and become the villain whose name can’t be said out loud.
What I love is how unapologetic she is. She’s not softening the edges or sanding down the anger to make herself palatable. Her aesthetic is indie-pop soaked in gasoline. Theatrical, yes—but only because that’s what survival looks like when you’ve spent years performing for someone who never clapped for you.
I’m assuming there’s an EP coming, maybe more. She’s already booking rooms like Arlene’s Grocery in NYC and getting people talking. But it’s not hype that makes her dangerous. It’s that you can’t unhear her. Once you’ve lived through a song like “Us,” you recognize the way she cuts. Slow. Sharp. Close to the bone.
Some probably says she’s bitter and that she’s overreacting. That she’s crazy. Typical bullshit gaslighting. But that’s fine. Because while they’re spinning whatever version keeps the new friends comfortable, Carolyn’s making sure everyone who’s ever been tossed aside has a soundtrack.
And it sounds like this.
