Some of the experiences catalogued on the album are her own – “Growing” is about a quarter-life crisis and was written during her first ever trip to the UK to play The Great Escape festival – while others are inspired by those close to her: “Speak Now” is about a friend finding the courage to end a long-term relationship that was headed for the altar.

All come wrapped in an indie-pop shell that’s catchy but never disposable, relatable yet uniquely personal, dancefloor-ready yet, in songs such as “Into Sunsets” and “Growing”, heartbreakingly delicate. Imagine the lush, ’80s-indebted pop of MUNA sipping cocktails with ’70s-era Fleetwood Mac, throw in the lyrical smarts of Joni Mitchell and Paul Kelly, and you’re in the right ballpark.

Cassar-Daley has wanted to release her debut album for years, but the time never felt right. Instead, the singer-songwriter issued a steady stream of singles, building on the momentum of her 2022 debut EP, I Don’t Know Who To Call. Along the way there were international festival slots (The Great Escape) and supports with Peter Garrett, Thelma Plum, Tim Finn, King Stingray, Dan Sultan and Jessica Mauboy, as well as multiple headline runs around Australia. The awards came thick and fast: New Talent of the Year at the National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) and Indigenous Artist of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards (QMAs) in 2022; Song of the Year for “King of Disappointment” at both the 2024 AIR Music Awards and the QMAs, where the track also won the Pop Award; Indigenous Artist of the Year at the 2025 QMAs; and, in 2026, Song of the Year and the Pop Award at the QMAs for “Kiss Me Like You’re Leaving”. Each performance, single and accolade represented another step on the path to her debut full-length.

“A few years ago I don’t think I had the confidence to tell a producer how I felt and what I wanted,” she says. “But now I’m so invested in each of these songs and each story, and I had a say in every decision made. I feel totally connected to this album.”

Cassar-Daley assembled a crack team of producers on Tattoos Used To Come Off In The Pool, including Robby De Sá (The Veronicas, MAY-A), MSquared (Newton Faulkner, Aloe Blacc), Ethan Reginato (Meg Mac, The Avalanches) and Garrett Kato (Budjerah, Tones And I). Top of mind was ensuring that, even though the songs were recorded with different collaborators at different times and places – from Sydney to Nashville – the album retained a common thread, making it feel like a complete and compelling body of work. Cassar-Daley sums up that thread in one word: “storytelling”.

“Behind all the production, at the end of the day each song is just a story in different outfits. Whether there’s an 808 on the track or it’s totally stripped back, it all starts on either piano or guitar. The common thread through it all is stories I’ve connected and resonated with and then brought to life.”

On the uptempo, ’80s-synth driven “Clichés”, Cassar-Daley asks for plainspoken honesty amid the well-worn excuses she’s received – and given – for ending a relationship (“I bet you need space/I bet it’s just a break/I bet that it’s the wrong time at the right place”). More self-empowered than woe-is-me, it features the ultimate kiss-off to an ex: “Bet you thought I could never recover/Bless your heart/Won’t be long till I’m in bed with another”.

The lilting, tender “Into Sunsets” is about mistakenly thinking you’d found ‘the one’, and features a favourite lyric of Cassar-Daley’s: “I would make a promise/And you’d just make things up.” The melody-soaked synth pop of “All I’m Thinking About” is a novel take on obsessing over a partner’s ex, while the Kacey Musgraves-esque “Souvenir” is the loveliest of breakup songs – one of acceptance and inner-peace, where you can look back on the relationship with fondness rather than animosity. “Cool Girl” is inspired by the ‘cool girl monologue’ delivered by Rosamund Pike’s character Amy Dunne in the film Gone Girl, and explores the experience of losing yourself while trying to conform to other people’s expectations. “It’s so relatable, particularly for women in relationships trying to conform to these societal pressures,” says Cassar-Daley.

“Take It” builds from a gentle, sombre acoustic lament into a life-affirming climax that captures Cassar-Daley at the peak of her songwriting powers, while “Forget I Ever Said It” is a raw examination of a relationship breakdown (“We’re fragile then we’re reckless/Passive, then aggressive/So used to the wreckage/Say it, then regret it”).

Cassar-Daley’s vocals capture the vulnerability of such moments in part because some were lifted off demos recorded just after a song was written, when the emotion was at its rawest. “Sometimes you just really catch the vibe on the day when you’ve written the song, and that’s when the energy is most there,” she says. “Those are often the takes that we all resonate with most.”

That those takes – and this album – capture Cassar-Daley in her purest artistic form is one of her proudest accomplishments with Tattoos Used To Come Off In The Pool.

“I feel totally connected to this album. That was really important leading into a debut album, knowing that this is going to be a body of work that is me. If I reflect in 15, 20 years’ time, I'll just know that that was from this time of my life. And I had total control over it.”