Domino Kirke to Release Album Inspired by Motherhood: ‘Parenting Is the Highest Art Form’

As a doula, Domino Kirke is consistently inspired by the beauty of motherhood and for her upcoming sophomore album, parenting played an influential part. The Most Familiar Star will arrive on April 18, Rolling Stone can exclusively announce. Kirke also shared the video for its lead single, “It’s Not There,” with Angel Olsen.

“This record was such a test for me. It took five years to finish because life just kept happening, and there finally wasn’t this urgency (the kind I used to have as a younger musician) to put it out into the world! Quickly! Or I’ll be forgotten!” she tells Rolling Stone. “I need time to create at my own pace. I need to allow my love of music to seep into all areas of my life. Parenting is the highest art form, I believe this through and through today.”

Kirke wrote the eight-track record alongside Elliot Krimsky and Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear, who are also parents to young children. A press release for the record teases a “living and breathing soundscape” on the LP.

“Being a doula for as long as I’ve been a parent has healed my relationship with my creativity over and over again,” Kirke says. “I’m constantly reminded by my kids and clients that I’m a profoundly creative person. I don’t need to be making music or putting art into the world to feel like an artist. But when I stop singing, that’s when I wilt.”

Kirke tapped Angel Olsen for The Most Familiar Star‘s first single, which is accompanied by a powerful and haunting video over the course of a year-and-a-half. It stars actors/dancers Omri Drumlevich and Zina Zinchenko, a couple in real life who are also parents. Kirke met Zinchenko and Drumlevich at a performance and says she was “moved by them as a blooming family” since they performed while expecting a child.

“She danced flawlessly with her baby on her lap and one in utero. It was so relatable — creatives trying to find time for their art, their children, and each other. It’s no small feat!” Kirke says about some of the choreography featured in the video. “I wrote the song with this idea of a mother speaking to her former self about coming to terms with parenthood.”

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Kirke says she wanted to capture “the energy shift” that happens in parents when you have a second child. “As a musician myself and a parent, I felt the biggest surge of grief around my creative life when I found out I was going to have a second child,” she says. “I feel so lucky with the timing of this video and how we were able to wait and shoot phase two. It really added so much depth to the narrative and the theme.” (Kirke is married to actor Penn Badgley, and shares son James, 4, with him. She’s also mother to Cassius Riley, 16.)

The Most Familiar Star follows her debut album Beyond Waves in 2017, and EPs Everyone Else Is Boring in 2006 and The Guard in 2012. Along with releasing music, she also leads the doula collective Carriage House Birth in Brooklyn and co-authored a book about parenthood in 2021.

The Most Familiar Star Track List

1. “Mercy”
2. “The Most Familiar Story”
3. “Oldest Missing”
4. “City”
5. “It’s Not There” featuring Angel Olsen
6. “Secret Growing”
7. “Stepchild”
8. “Teething”