How Lores influenced the storytelling of Dove City’s Sin & Redemption

Dove City’s new album Sin & Redemption, on IAMHER, captures the duo’s trademark balance of shadow and light. Built around moody, melodic textures and emotional songwriting, the record explores themes of tension and release while maintaining a cohesive identity across all eight tracks.

Central to the sound was Native Instruments’ Lores, which Josh and Danielle Dupont describe as a guiding presence throughout the writing process. Its cinematic tones and organic atmospheres helped unify the project, shaping tracks like “Coal in My Chest” into moments that feel both intimate and expansive.

Jump to these sections:

• Finding a sonic thread with Lores
• Balancing emotion and technical decisions
• Embracing happy accidents in production
• How “Coal in My Chest” came about
• Learning restraint from Lores
• Advice on creating an emotional through-line

In this interview, Dove City shares how Lores became a thread across the record, the lessons they carried into future productions, and how focusing on emotional intent helped them define their sound.

Tell sonic stories with Lores

Sin & Redemption has a very defined mood from start to finish. How early on did you know you wanted a cohesive sonic thread to run through the entire album?

We didn’t set out with the idea of creating a concept album.

At first, it was just about writing one song, “Coal in My Chest.” That track was the first time we opened up Lores, and from the moment we found the sound that carried it, we realized it was something special. The tone was cinematic, organic, haunting – not what you’d expect in house music. That immediately gave us the feeling we’d stumbled onto a secret weapon. Once we’d finished the first song, we wanted to keep going and see how far we could push this sound.

It was only later that we realized Lores had given the whole project a cohesive thread. The atmosphere it created, mysterious and moody, tied everything together. It wasn’t about deciding on a theme up front. It was more like Lores revealed the theme to us as we went along. That gave the album its unique identity: a consistent emotional undercurrent that wasn’t planned, but felt undeniable.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: Before touching the keyboard, ask what feeling you want the track to carry. Opening Lores and scrolling until a patch resonates with that emotion is often more inspiring than chasing technical perfection.

How do you balance personal emotion with technical choices when you’re reaching for a sound like Lores?

For us, every track starts with a mood. Sometimes it comes from a vocal, sometimes from a texture, sometimes from a chord progression, but the starting point is always about emotion. Lores is almost built for this approach because every preset feels like a doorway into a different atmosphere. You don’t sit down with Lores and think about what plugin chain to use. You just play it, and eventually land yourself with a sound that strikes the right emotional chord. That’s the balance: the emotional intention leads, and the technical decisions follow.

Once that mood is locked in, we use production choices to shape the story around it. If the track is carrying sadness or weight, we’ll lean into darker tones. If the song feels like release or hope, we’ll bring in lighter textures. In that way, the emotion always has the first word, and the production tools help us articulate it more clearly.

That keeps our music from ever feeling overly engineered. The goal is to let the heart of the track shine through, and Lores makes that process intuitive.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: Don’t clean everything up. The slight imperfections in timing or phrasing from Lores bring a human feel that blends beautifully with electronic elements. Leave some of those rough edges in.

Were there any happy accidents with Lores that led to unexpected song directions?

Absolutely. Lores almost invites happy accidents.

You might go in searching for one texture and end up in a completely different emotional space than you planned. Sometimes, just holding one note would open up a vibe so strong that the whole song had to pivot around it. That happened more than once while writing Sin & Redemption. What started as background atmosphere suddenly became the backbone of the entire track.

And honestly, part of that openness comes from who we are as a duo. We’re not just musical partners, we’re married, and we’re parents. Our lives are built on constantly adapting and rebalancing, whether it’s in the studio or parenting. So when an unexpected sound from Lores took us somewhere new, we didn’t resist it. We leaned into it. Those little surprises became some of the defining moments of the record.

In a way, Lores mirrored our life: unpredictable, but full of beauty if you let it unfold.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: Many assume Lores is just for scoring films, but it shines in organic house and electronic tracks. Using it in a different context makes the textures feel unique in a club environment.

“Coal In My Chest” sets the tone for the record. Where does Lores sit in that track, and how did it shape the overall atmosphere?

“Coal in My Chest” was the first track we wrote for the album, and it was also our first time diving into Lores.

The very first sound we landed on, a preset called Rattling Waters, became the backbone of the track. It’s this moody pad that runs from start to finish, setting the entire emotional tone. That texture created the framework for everything else: the rhythm, the pacing, and eventually the vocals. Without that foundation, the track wouldn’t exist.

What really made the song special, though, was the collaboration with Tone of Arc.

We had been working on the instrumental for a while, and one weekend we played it out live at a show we shared with him. There were no vocals, just the track, as our closing song. Right after our set, he took the stage for his live show and began singing over it. Danielle and I looked at each other. It was instantly one of those “we have to make this happen” moments.

A week later, Tone Of Arc sent us the vocals, and they were incredible. He mentioned he was sick at the time, which made his voice deeper and raspier, and it fit perfectly with the mood that Lores had already set.

That combination, Lores’ beautifully haunting foundation and Tone Of Arc’s raw vocal, is what gave “Coal in My Chest” its identity. In many ways, it defined the album as a whole.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: When writing vocals, treat Lores as a conversational partner rather than background filler. The textures create space for a lyric to sit emotionally, which makes the vocal and instrumentation feel like they’re telling the story together.

What’s one thing you learned while working with Lores on Sin & Redemption that you carried into your latest releases?

The biggest thing we learned was the importance of restraint. When you find a sound as rich as Lores, the temptation is to pile it on everywhere. But the more we wrote, the more we realized that the power of Lores isn’t just in its layers – it’s in giving it the space to breathe. Sometimes, just a single chord held steady was enough to set the entire mood of a track. That discipline changed the way we think about arrangement as a whole.

We’ve carried that lesson forward into everything we’ve made since. Now, we focus more on atmosphere and space than on overproducing. Lores taught us that emotion doesn’t always come from adding more. It comes from letting the right sound shine in the right moment.

That mindset has bled into our use of other instruments and plugins as well. It gave us the confidence to be minimal when it serves the song.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: Breakdowns are where Lores really cuts through. Stripping back drums and letting its textures move upfront can reset the energy before you slam back into rhythm.

For producers who feel their music sounds too scattered, what would you tell them about finding that emotional through-line in their sound?

The through-line has to come from something deeper than just genre or style. For us, it’s always about chasing a mood. That’s what ties everything together. If you’re writing without an emotional center, the track won’t feel human, no matter how polished the production is. Tools like Lores can help because they immediately anchor you in a feeling, but the real work is in asking yourself: what do I want this song to say? Once you answer that, the rest of the choices get a lot clearer.

We’d also say don’t chase trends.

The second you try to copy what’s “in,” you’ve already lost the thread. Trends shift constantly, and you’ll always be behind them. But if you listen to your emotional instincts and stick to them, you’ll develop a sound that’s unmistakably yours. Even if not everyone gets it, at least you’re being authentic.

Art is an opportunity to express thoughts and emotions through a medium that makes it palpable. Don’t exploit art. Rather, utilize it as therapy and accept the reality that popularity is not the end goal. It is creative expression, and for many of us, it is therapy.

Lores pro tip from Dove City: It’s tempting to layer multiple patches, but restraint is key. Choosing one or two standout textures from Lores often gives the track more power and definition than piling on too much.

Wrapping it all up

Sin & Redemption shows Dove City’s ability to build a record that feels consistent without losing variety. The textures of Lores helped provide that continuity, creating an atmosphere that tied together their deep, vocal-driven style with a distinct emotional center.

By leaning into mood first and production choices second, Dove City found ways to let songs breathe instead of overfilling them. That approach gave the record both space and impact, and it is one they continue to apply in new projects.

The album marks a turning point for the duo, with Lores serving as more than a production tool. It became a framework for storytelling, helping them translate personal emotion into a body of work that connects on a larger scale.

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