Ones2Watch Home

For Nina Dopamine, the rush of falling in love and the crash that follows are two sides of the same feeling. Across her new EP dopamine rush, the New York-based artist explores the intoxicating pull of romance, the fantasies we build around other people, and the difficult realization that even the most powerful relationships cannot heal wounds we have yet to face ourselves.

Nina Dopamine’s journey into music is far from the typical emerging artist story. After graduating from Harvard and working as a software engineer in New York, she turned to songwriting as a necessary outlet from the pressures of everyday life and the experiences that shaped her. That sense of refuge becomes the foundation of dopamine rush, a raw and self-aware pop-rock record that blends contemporary alt-pop influences with flashes of Warped Tour-era nostalgia.

The EP’s title captures the tension at the heart of the record. As Nina explains, “The title reflects both the emotional high and the central illusion at the heart of the record.” Throughout dopamine rush, love feels euphoric and transformative, offering a temporary escape from loneliness and uncertainty. But like the chemical rush that inspired its name, that feeling eventually fades, leaving behind the emotions that were there all along.

The body of work opens with a collage of racing percussion and tense guitar riffs soundtracking the aftermath of betrayal on “make you weep.” Nina introduces a narrator caught between heartbreak and anger after discovering someone she trusted was hiding another relationship. She imagines the satisfaction of watching him regret what he lost, yet beneath the revenge fantasy is a deeper sense of recognition. When she sings, “Thought I saw myself in you / ’Cause I’m a little broken too,” the song shifts from resentment toward empathy, revealing that the connection she believed in was rooted in seeing a reflection of herself in someone else.

That desire to be truly understood continues through “replace me,” a confident yet vulnerable anthem built around the belief that some relationships are impossible to replicate. The narrator insists her former partner will search for their bond in every relationship that follows, not because she was simply someone he loved, but because she was someone who saw through his defenses. Beneath the bravado, however, is the same longing that runs throughout the EP: the desire to be the person who finally makes someone feel completely seen.

That longing reaches its peak on the raw and racing “thirteen again,” the EP’s emotional centerpiece. After years of growing cynical about love, the singer-songwriter finds herself pulled back into the kind of overwhelming infatuation she thought she had outgrown. Staying up all night texting, exchanging bad poetry, and drawing hearts around someone’s name, she becomes the younger version of herself who still believes love can change everything. What makes the track so compelling is the tension between innocence and experience. She captures the thrill of believing in something bigger while acknowledging the risks that come with it. The narrator knows heartbreak is possible, but she still wonders if this could be the exception.

As the record progresses, Nina questions whether these overwhelming feelings are truly signs of destiny or simply moments of escape. “if you chose me” explores the heartbreak of building an entire future around someone who may have represented possibility more than partnership, while the synth-led “broken boy” examines the painful realization that love cannot rescue someone who is not ready to confront their own struggles. By the time the EP reaches final track “runaway train,” the search for answers turns inward, revealing that the narrator’s pursuit of romance was never only about finding the right person. It was about trying to outrun pain that existed long before they arrived.

That self-awareness makes dopamine rush so powerful. Nina Dopamine never dismisses the emotions at the center of these relationships. The feelings are intense because they are genuine, even when the fantasies surrounding them cannot last. Through vulnerable storytelling and sharp lyricism, Nina transforms a record about heartbreak into something far more reflective: a portrait of what happens when we stop searching for someone else to save us and finally start understanding ourselves.