After more than two years of relative quiet, New York City dream pop project Whisper Doll has stepped back into the light — and they’re not tiptoeing. Today, bandleader Fiona Tagami announced that the four-piece has signed to Brooklyn indie label Take Care Records, and to mark the occasion, they’ve shared a melodically charged new single, “Am I a Knife,” along with an official music video co-directed by Tagami and Owen Lehman (Geese, MX LONELY).

“Am I a Knife” is a striking re-introduction. Twinkling synths cascade over a driving bassline while Tagami’s vocals climb toward a thunderous chorus — “Oh, take me as I am, Oh, you know that you can” — that lands somewhere between a plea and a dare. The song is built around a sharp thesis: the way feminine desire gets severed from the female body under the weight of the male gaze.

“This song is my reaction to seeing men get indoctrinated into an ideology that tells them lust is sin and seeing the blame get placed on women,” Tagami explains. “This makes me feel like a knife because I am in the body of a woman and can inspire feelings of desire separate from my own soul. Seeing the bodies of women become detached from their minds. Like dolls…”

That tension plays out vividly in the accompanying video, which finds the band performing in a wood-drenched, gothic church. Spiritual visions flicker between performance shots, and as the chorus erupts, blood begins to spill from the grasp of a knife — a literalization of the pressurized burden the song interrogates.

Watch “Am I a Knife” here: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Whisper+Doll+Am+I+a+Knife

Tagami has a go-to analogy for the world Whisper Doll inhabits: imagine sneaking into a park after hours. The adrenaline mixed with the quiet, the darkness that’s equal parts unnerving and comforting, the strange satisfaction of solitude sharpened by the lateness of the hour. It’s an otherworldly feeling, but a deeply grounded one — and it’s the through-line listeners can expect on the band’s forthcoming sophomore album, due later this year.

That record marks a few firsts for the project. Whisper Doll began as Tagami’s solo bedroom outlet in high school in Atlanta, where she fell hard for The Sundays, Mazzy Star, and The Cranberries. While making her 2024 debut Perfume Garden, she relocated to New York and quickly tangled herself in the city’s indie scene, eventually linking up with drummer Shawn Majeed, guitarist Maya Lagman, and bassist Julia Chrzanowski. The new album is the band’s first full-band effort and the first one made entirely in NYC — a collaborative leap forward, and a newly clarified vision for Tagami.

Known for their captivating live shows, Whisper Doll have toured across the U.S. and Japan and recently previewed new material on a short East Coast run through Boston, Kingston, and New Hampshire. Up next: a hometown set at Night Club 101 in New York City on May 4 with support from speedfriending and Panik Flower, followed by a date at Elsewhere in Brooklyn with Juliana Chahayed on the 13th.

For Take Care Records — the Brooklyn indie operating under the mantra “It’s no good unless it’s real” — Whisper Doll is a fitting addition to a roster built around singular artists with creative integrity. On the strength of “Am I a Knife,” that fit feels exactly right.

Press play, then catch them live while the city’s still letting them play rooms this size.