O'SIRUS

Welcome to Wheels Off, a show about the messy reality of the creative life.

I'm Rhett Miller.

That's when it got wheels off.

We started up and we ain't gonna stop.

I like you.

Like it or not.

That's where they got wheels off. Wow. Dessa, my guest on this episode of Wheels Off is so beyond.

That's it. Full stop. She's just, she's, wow, she's got a lot going on. And I don't just

mean like professionally. People talk about multi hyphenates, but usually it's almost a pejorative.

In the case of Dessa, she has one of those active minds that lands on something, masters it, moves on to the next thing.

It's phenomenal.

It's inspiring.

And it comes through in full effect during the course of this conversation you're about to hear.

Dessa is, I guess, best known as a musician, part of the hip-hop collective Doom Tree. During the pandemic,

she released a single in the middle of each month, on the 15th of each month, was the IDS series.

She's a writer. We talk a lot during the interview about a piece that she wrote for the New York Times

magazine about the experience of being a musician during

the pandemic, which is fantastic. I cannot recommend it highly enough. She has released books

of poetry, a book of essays, the memoirish book called My Own Devices. She helmed the season of, this is already out, the second season

they're about to start work on a podcast series called Deeply Human. It was made in partnership

with the BBC. She's just, she's got so much going on. I was tempted to try and drag out our conversation to just get as much as I could from her because it's also interesting and juicy and fascinating. And y'all, if you've listened to these shows before, you know this is my favorite thing. Useful. It's very useful stuff.

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