Dessa is best known for her work as both a solo artist who floats between indie pop and hip hop, and as a member of the Minneapolis hip hop collective known as Doomtree. Along the way in her career, she’s done spoken word performances and published some short collections of poetries and essays. So when she announced that she had written her first full book, it wasn’t a complete surprise. Now that My Own Devices is here, we get both the expected and unexpected.

Now, if you’ve spent a decent amount of time reading music memoirs, you know that making interesting or exciting music doesn’t automatically translate into an interesting read. Sometimes you learn that artists think they have a lot to say when they actually don’t, while others might, but you’d never know because they are afraid to make themselves or anyone else look bad. Also, it usually takes someone further into their career to take time to slow down and take stock of everything that’s happened so far. When it comes to My Own Devices, we get a book that is extremely open and honest and current, which is a rarity for any genre. The book is divided into short essays and narratives, with a through line of the one romantic relationship that’s been off and on and complicating her life over the last fifteen years. Dessa doesn’t hold back, and she’s fair in trying show how both sides were attracted to each other but ultimately incompatible, and she spends a good portion of the book examining herself and why she can’t make a clean break and move on. While all of this is happening, we get chapters devoted to her mother, father, and brother, as well as tales from the road, detailing what it’s actually like to make your living as an independent artist who’s constantly touring. This goes from economic breakdowns about how important the merch booth is, to the misconceptions people have about how going on the road is like taking a vacation. To make the point, she actually devotes a chapter to a trip she took to New Orleans while not on tour, and just how different her experience was each step along the way. If you haven’t spent the time with Dessa or Doomtree, you’ll probably enjoy this book anyway, just as a well-written tale of one woman’s journey to make her own path and sort out all the different ways in which life is messy and beautiful. Even if you have spent a lot of time with Dessa (which we have – Doomtree was the very first interview published on this blog back in 2010), there were still be plenty of details that will both surprise you and delight you. In fact, some of my favorite parts of the book are the minor details about her collaborators – observations about how Sims’s eyelashes are so long they hit his sunglasses, or how she and Aby Wolf will pore over the minutia of their vocal harmonies in rehearsals.

There are moments of heartache, humor, and contemplation over the course of the book, but most of all you just get to know a woman who’s curious, determined, thoughtful, and not afraid to show you’re her scars. Not only has Dessa written a really compelling book her first time out, but hopefully she’ll inspire some other to follow suit. Why wait until your golden years to write a book, when you have interesting stories and philosophies right now?