Insomnia makes you feel like you’re the only person awake in the world. Everyone else is sleeping peacefully while you’re lying there, sheets twisted, mind racing through every conversation you’ve had in the past month. Your body gets hot. Then cold. You check the time and realize only eleven minutes have passed since you last looked. The worst part is knowing you’ll probably go out tomorrow night and try to fix it with drinks and hard bodies and whatever you can get your hands on. Knowing it won’t work. Doing it anyway. Katie Belle’s new track “Bad Dreams” understands that cycle in a way that feels uncomfortably accurate.
This synth-electro-pop track is her second single leading up to the “People Pleaser” EP dropping late 2025 and it explores insomnia with the kind of honesty that feels like she’s been reading your diary. Written with Fabio Campedelli during her six-week stint in LA earlier this year, the song opens with Katie confessing: “Can’t sleep cause I’m all in my head, trippin over things that I said / My palms are getting sweaty, is this what it feels like to be dead.”
That sweaty-palmed panic is visceral. Your body temperature shifts when anxiety takes over. You start wondering if everyone feels this way or if you’re slowly losing it.
The thing about overthinking is how physical it gets. Your chest tightens. Your thoughts speed up until they’re just noise. Katie captures that in how she describes being “drunk on my thoughts”—this intoxication that you can’t shake, that you keep returning to even though you know it’s fucking destroying you. There’s something almost addictive about the spiral. You hate it and you can’t get enough of it at the same damn time.
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So she does what we all do. We goe out. We hook up. The drinks flow. The music moves your body but “it’s not loud enough to forget.” I’ve been there—dancing in a crowded room, feeling the bass in my ribs, and still hearing my own thoughts louder than the damn speakers. Still replaying whatever I said earlier that day. Still wondering what people think of me.
Katie’s been splitting time between Atlanta and LA, performing at Hollywood venues and working in Campedelli’s studio to build this sound that absolutely slaps. The production is sleek and pulsing, all electro-pop shimmer that matches the racing-heartbeat feeling of anxiety. She’s a voting member of The Recording Academy, lead vocalist for Color The Night Band back home in Atlanta, and you can hear that experience in how she layers vulnerability over club-ready beats that hit different when you’re in your feelings at 3 AM.
The chorus lands as a plea: “Keep me up, when the stars and the moon collide / I need you to save me from my bad dreams.” She’s asking someone to interrupt the spiral. Keep me awake so I don’t have to face what’s waiting in my head. Keep me out of my mind. There’s desperation in that request, the kind that comes from knowing you can’t save yourself.
What gets me is how she admits the cycle: “Twisting and turning, I’m drunk on my thoughts / I’ll do it again, cause I can’t get enough.” She knows she’s doing it. She knows it’s not helping. She’s going to do it again anyway because we’re all a little delulu when it comes to our worst habits. That’s the trap of bad coping mechanisms—they feel like the only option even when you’re fully aware they’re making shit worse.
The bridge gets darker. “Living and burning and doing it fast / Pushing the limit, I know that I’ll crash / Losing control, I don’t like it like that.” Katie’s describing self-destruction in real time. Moving fast enough that maybe you won’t feel the impact when you hit bottom. Except you always fucking feel it. The whole track is lowkey devastating in how accurately it captures that feeling of watching yourself spiral and being powerless to stop it.
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Her May single “Cigarette” was all chill melodies and nostalgia, looking back at old loves with that bittersweet longing. “Bad Dreams” flips that energy entirely. Where “Cigarette” was reflective, this track pulses with urgency. With need. The synths build tension instead of releasing it. Katie’s vocals shift between confession and desperation. Everything about the production mirrors that can’t-sit-still anxiety of being trapped in your own head. The way the beat drops when she hits that chorus feels like your heart rate spiking at 4 AM when the panic really sets in.
When she sings about looking in the mirror and wishing she could be somebody else, that’s the real damage of insomnia. The self-hatred that creeps in when you’re alone with your thoughts for too long. You start seeing every flaw. Every mistake. Every damn reason people might not actually like you. The dark gets darker when there’s nobody around to pull you back. It’s giving big yikes energy but in the most relatable way possible.
Katie repeats throughout: “I feel the weight when I’m thinking too much / So don’t, let me think too much.” That pause before “don’t” says everything. It’s a warning and a plea. Stop me before I spiral again. Save me from myself. The vulnerability there is what makes this track more than just another dance song—it’s fire because Katie isn’t trying to be anything other than honest about how exhausting it is to live inside a brain that won’t shut the fuck up.
“Bad Dreams” works because Katie isn’t offering solutions. She’s just documenting the mess. The way we try to outrun our thoughts. The way we use other people as distractions. The way we know we’re self-destructing and do it anyway because at least it’s something we can control. The electro-pop production keeps everything urgent and alive, refusing to let you settle into any one feeling for too long. It’s the kind of track that lives rent free in your head after one listen, which feels appropriate given what the damn thing is about.
With “People Pleaser” coming later this year, Katie’s building a portrait of someone who thinks too much, who gives too much, who can’t ever seem to just fucking rest. “Bad Dreams” is the anthem for every night you’ve spent wide awake, looking for anything loud enough to drown out your own mind. No cap—this shit hits exactly where it’s supposed to.
