13 OCTOBER 1-7, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | FIND MORE MUSIC COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/MUSIC Contrasting Effect SUNSTONEY TAPS INTO THE HEALING POWERS OF MUSIC AND DANCES HER WAY THROUGH THE DARKNESS. BY CLEO MIRZA Making music is therapy for Eman El Saied. Literally, not figuratively. El Saied is someone who lives with bipolar disorder. For the auspicious artist who now calls Denver home, having moved here three years ago from Virginia, making music isn’t some abstract, conceptual conceit or an artistic cliché as it may seem when other musicians casually evoke such sentiments. For El Saied, who performs under the name Sunstoney, songwriting provides a safe space for her to sit with the weight of outsized emotions without justifying or censoring herself. “When it comes to my songwriting,” she explains, “I lean into how big it felt, how small I felt, or how all- consuming it can feel.” On her new album, “EVERYTHING IS FLEETING,” El Saied explores the inner workings of her mind with unprecedented depth, juxtaposing themes of suppressed anger, grief and political exhaustion with euphoric house beats. True to the genre’s roots, the album pays homage to dance mu- sic not as escapism, but as a much-needed avenue for release. Dance music was the ideal medium for El Saied to unpack these complexities. She noticed a common theme across some of her favorite dance songs, from artists like Kaytranada, Disclosure, Aluna Georege, Pinkpantheress and Kelela. “They all seek to have this reassurance of self-esteem or belief,” she observes. “It’s, like, ‘I’m going to tell you what’s going on, how I’m going to overcome it and feel freed from the shackles of whatever I’m going through, and we’re going to dance it out.’” Because of the way bipolar disorder af- fects memory, latent memories can resur- face without warning. One old wound in particular kept gnawing at El Saied while she was recording this project: the end of a 20-year friendship. “We don’t speak anymore,” she says. “I had known that person since I was 12. So I have all of these formative memories, all these big feelings, and I was holding that back.” El Saied says the album didn’t feel complete without addressing the loss, so she wrote “CRY WOLF,” giving herself the chance to fi nally mourn the relationship. “I don’t think I even let myself cry for real,” she confi des. “It wasn’t until the song was done that I was like, ‘Oh, man, it is that serious. That was traumatic, and I had to make some art out of it.’” The song served as a “turning point” for El Saied in the creative process. “It allowed me to close the door on a decision that I had to make for my own well-being, but also reframing it in a way that’s, like, ‘You’re still standing, though.’” Through writing, recording and performing “CRY WOLF,” El Saied continuously reassured herself that leaving that toxic friendship was the right move. “When I perform it live, even though it sounds dra- matic or entertaining to a crowd when you’re talking your shit, I’m also reframing it to feel empow- ered, despite how exhausted or sad I may have felt (at the time),” she says. “It’s something that I’m actualizing out loud.” The crux of El Saied’s artistic evolution has been fi nding the bal- ance between making space for her emotions and wallowing in them. Looking at some of her early songs, inspired by a particularly nasty breakup, El Saied cringes at her ten- dency to “trauma dump” in the lyrics. “I would very much dwell,” she admits, joking that the songs from that time followed a pattern of: “First verse: I’m sad. Chorus: This is why I’m sad. Verse two: Here’s how my sad- ness has shaped my perception of the world.” Channeling pure despair into her music started to feel monotonous and restrictive. “Between ‘The Mirror Is Calling’ and this album,” she recalls, “I had to be like, ‘OK, conclude this bitch. What is the light at the end of the tunnel?’” With her latest effort, she challenged herself to represent the full spectrum of her heightened emotions, while also highlight- ing how quickly they fl uctuate – hence the album title. She succeeded. When El Saied is feeling her best, she writes invigorating songs that become mantras of self-affi rma- tion. “It’s those elated bipolar feelings of, ‘I’m on top of the world, and no one can touch me. I’m hot, sexy, beautiful and everyone wants me,” she says of songs like “BODY LANGUAGE” and “DRIVEN UP.” In stark contrast, there are also songs like the post-punk-infl ected “CRASH OUT” and “CRY WOLF,” which she says came from a place of, “‘Well, I hate everyone, and I can’t trust no one,’ and how quickly that comes and goes for me.” Embracing the intensity of her emotions has led to some of her most authentic music. “Bipolar is a superpower,” she declares. “In a weird way, I’m lucky to have it. Shit is just more intense for me,” but luckily, she says, she has music as an outlet. “I got to process my anger through this dance beat. I realized I can be dark and depressing. I can be super happy and abundant. I can do both.” Though set on making a dance album, El Saied didn’t sacrifi ce or dilute the raw vulnerability of her lyricism. Looking at the origins of dance music, she recognized that themes of liberation and resistance have always been baked into dance music, no matter how fast the BPM. The scope of “EVERYTHING IS FLEET- ING” goes beyond El Saied’s personal strug- gles, tapping into the collective grief she was observing around her. “You can tell the most fucked up story, and the beat is so hot, that it’s a bait and switch,” El Saied says of the genre’s subversive power. “The dance instrumentals are where I love to be, but the context can be serious at times.” Writing an album about liberation felt disingenuous, she says, if she didn’t also acknowledge the ongoing struggles of op- pressed people around the world, from Gaza to Sudan. “Halfway through making the record I was, like, ‘If you don’t address reality right now, how do you even call yourself an artist?’ Even if it’s through a million meta- phors, talk about it somehow.” El Saied’s latest proves that intricate, heartfelt lyricism still has a place in dance music. You can confront topics that are too big, too uncomfortable or even too risky to bring up in everyday conversation. “There was a point where I was, like, ‘Holy shit, everyone is afraid to talk. No one can have an actual discussion,’” she says. “I just felt like I needed to address this feeling of, ‘How can we feel free, if not through con- versation, through music, through protest, through community?’ Some songs needed to be written, about feeling silenced, numb and a lack of emotional bandwidth.” The album’s closing cut, “PROTECT MY PEACE,” is an unequivocal rallying cry bolstered by an addictive United Kingdom jungle-inspired beat: “I want to feel liber- ated/Instead of feeling jaded/Recession level faded.” The message is not as neatly packaged as a silver lining, but that’s what makes this album true to life; it embraces life’s messy contradictions and ephemeral nature, al- lowing a wide array of emotions to exist simultaneously. “Joy as an act of resistance is a hard one to unpack,” El Saied refl ects. “Like, what do you mean I can still enjoy my life while everything is up in fl ames? I can give myself permission to be happy without having it all fi gured out?” Ultimately, El Saied’s music aims to en- courage that sense of balance in others. “I’ve had people at shows pull me aside and say, ‘I was dealing with that exact thing, and that was such a nice place to let that out,’” she concludes. “This is a space where you can just let go, and know you’re not alone in that.” “EVERYTHING IS FLEETING” by Sunstoney is out now on all music platforms. Sunstoney produced most of this album, with co-production from Owen Martin, Noah Prebish, Danny Pauta and Yoni Gottleib. MUSIC PHOTO COURTESY OF KATHRYN FERNANDEZ