20 May 30 - June 5, 2024 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Down to a Science Dallas singer Sabina Chamoy’s love of music and dystopian fantasy has guided her as she comes of age. BY ALEX GONZALEZ S abina Chamoy has her future written in the stars. At the age of 17, Chamoy has already released a pair of promising singles, both showing off her songwriting prowess. The singer became classically trained while honing her poetic craft. Now a junior at Plano West Senior High School, whose choir group just won sweep- stakes awards during the University Inter- scholastic League competition, Chamoy is mapping out her post-high-school career. She grew up on the sounds of Taylor Swift and Journey, but never imagined she’d be- come a singer-songwriter herself. In the fifth grade, she won a poetry contest, which catalyzed her passion for writing. She kept her poetry “in a little yellow notebook,” and by the seventh grade, Chamoy started learn- ing how to play guitar. “My brother could play piano and he wanted to start learning guitar, so I started learning guitar with him,” Chamoy recalls. “And then [poetry and music] kind of in- fused together, and I started writing songs. And I’ll go back to my 13-year-old songs, and I’ll see that it was like a 13-year-old was writ- ing them. But it was also very impressive to me that I could put my poetry to music.” Chamoy has written several songs over the past four years, gaining fans from her friends and family, for whom she would per- form on occasion. Last year, her parents en- couraged her to head to the studio and record her music professionally. She recorded her first releases alongside producer Shariq Lalani at Audio Dallas Re- cording Studio, and released her debut sin- gle, “Save Me,” last year. A coming-of-age folky track, “Save Me” has Chamoy dreaming of someone to rescue her and guide her to a better place. “Grab my hand, drag me away / Lead me from this horrid place / Save me, show me you love me / Baby, that’s how it’s gonna be,” she sings on the song’s chorus. The minimalistic guitar-and-percussion- driven “Save Me” allows for Chamoy’s lyri- cal capabilities to shine. But her most recent single, “Full Moon” demonstrates her versa- tility as an artist. Howling Harmonies On “Full Moon,” Chamoy delivers gor- geously haunting vocals over a punchy rock track rife with snappy percussion and elec- trifying guitar riffs. She details a period in her life during which she experienced shifts within herself and in the world around her. “On the first of May / Happened that very day / I could tell you a million stories/ I was losing the faith / So I started to pray / In my eyes the stars were aligning / I looked around and searched the town for some- place that I could hide,” she sings on the song’s opening verse. A textbook Pisces, Chamoy sought an- swers through the universe. “I was going through a time in my life when everything around me seemed like it wasn’t real,” says Chamoy. “Too much crazy stuff was happening at the same time for me to be like, ‘This is normal.’ So I was like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on, it has to be like a full moon.’ I love Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf and I read a lot of vampires and were- wolves stuff, so I just started coming up with an escape route and an excuse for why ev- erything is going crazy.” In the song’s accompanying video, Chamoy undergoes a frightening transfor- mation as she recounts the events that oc- curred under a previous full moon. Haunting the halls of her school and later setting up a candlelit sanctuary outside, Chamoy learns to trust her instincts, both human and werewolf-like. When coming up with the concept for the video, she wrote the words “cosmic lu- nacy” on her mood board. “I had this whole idea for ‘Full Moon,’ and I wanted there to be werewolves,” Chamoy says. “I wanted the high school vibe in there because that’s always crazy at my age. But I really let [directors] Ava Ponder and Fin Fox- Mills from Twisted Cowboy Films take over a little bit, because they have such amazing ideas. They had a beautiful and cool direction that they wanted to go into.” At the moment, Chamoy is focused on her studies, but she’s writing new songs in the interim. She plans to experiment with different genres and put out new music in the near future. After high school, she plans to focus on academia and music in tandem. “I value education a lot,” says Chamoy. “And I want the college life experience. And I do want to major in biomolecular en- gineering, or something like that, because I’ve always loved science. But I really want to go somewhere where I can still pursue music, like maybe somewhere in Nashville or somewhere where there’s a big music scene. This is really my passion, and I love science, it’s very interesting to me, but [mu- sic and science] are two different sides of my mind. And to be balanced, I feel like I need both of them.” | B-SIDES | t Music Jennifer Motes Sabina Chamoy is still a junior at Plano West Senior High School.
