Nina Dopamine sought out music as an escape from the rigors of life, to outrun loneliness and childhood wounds; what began as a private emotional survival quickly evolved into an obsessive creative pursuit.
What's the origin of the Nina Dopamine name?
My real name is Nian Hu. Unfortunately, no one has ever been able to pronounce it correctly. I'm still haunted by childhood memories of teachers taking attendance, butchering my name, and then staring at the class in confusion while I quietly realized they were talking about me. Eventually I'd just raise my hand and say, "It's pronounced Nee-anne, and I'm present."
I figured rule number one for a stage name is that people should be able to say it out loud without flinching. "Nina" has always been my go-to coffee shop name, so it's a name I already respond to and it's a little more intuitive than "Nian."
"Dopamine" took longer. I wanted a three-syllable word with a long "ee" sound that paired well with Nina, so I spent an embarrassing amount of time mentally auditioning random dictionary words. The second I landed on "dopamine," I knew that was it.
The funny thing is that even though I originally chose it purely for the assonance and syllabic requirements, it ended up perfectly capturing what my music is about. My debut EP is literally called dopamine rush. Most of my songs revolve around chasing the feeling of euphoria and transformation in a romantic relationship. But they're also about the darker question underneath: what are you trying to escape from in the first place?
I've always been a bit of a dopamine seeker. Falling in love with strangers, booking impulsive trips, fantasizing about blowing up my life and starting over somewhere new. The tension between seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is probably something I'll spend the rest of my life trying to understand, so it felt fitting that it ended up in my name.
What are the main themes or topics for most of your songs, and do you think those topics will change over time?
Most of my songs revolve around obsession, heartbreak, fantasy, emotional dependency, and the ways we use romance to escape pain. I'm fascinated by the stories we tell ourselves when we're lonely, the meaning we project onto other people, and the hope that another person might somehow save us from ourselves.
I don't really sit down and decide to write a song. Usually something happens in my personal life that makes me feel some kind of strong emotion, whether it’s anger or grief or infatuation or something else entirely, and songwriting is simply my way of processing it. I consider myself a writer first and foremost. Most songs start as a rambling stream of consciousness in my Notes app while I'm sitting in bed with an acoustic guitar in my lap.
My songwriting process is honestly very chaotic. I know a handful of chords off the top of my head so I’ll strum those and come up with chord progressions that sound good to me, and then I’ll come up with melodies and lyrics on the spot. Sometimes the melodies are directly inspired by the chords, but sometimes the melodies emerge in isolation and then I struggle a bit trying to find the right chord to go along with the note I’m singing. Since I don’t really know much about music theory and rarely know what note I’m singing, you can imagine this is a very trial-and-error process. I record everything on my Macbook Photobooth so I can see what chords I’m playing, and I spend a lot of time scrambling between my guitar, my laptop, and my Notes app trying not to lose whatever just appeared in my head. There is very little planning involved.
What's strange is that songs often arrive almost fully formed. Sometimes an entire verse and chorus appear before I've had a chance to think about them. My song "if you chose me" was largely written that way. I had been crying over a guy for days, picked up my guitar, and the song basically spilled out exactly as is. I was just saying random filler words so I could get the melody down, more or less scatting but with real words, but they actually did a great job of capturing exactly what I was feeling deep down and what I’d probably been a bit too ashamed to admit out loud, so I kept them exactly as is.
I almost never revise my songs afterward. This is probably bad practice, but I like preserving that first version because it feels like the purest snapshot of whatever I was feeling at the time. Sometimes I feel like if I overthink it, or if I involve my conscious brain too much, it almost holds me back. I have to enter this flow state where words and melodies are just coming straight from my subconscious, when I’m barely aware of what I’m doing.
My favorite metaphor for songwriting is pretty gross. I think of it like throwing up a gallstone. You have all these thoughts and emotions accumulating inside you without realizing it, and eventually they compress into something painful that you can no longer ignore. Songwriting is just the act of getting it out so I can feel better. It's not glamorous, it's not planned, and I don't do it because it's fun — I do it because I have to. I’m honestly shocked when what emerges isn’t a disgusting gallstone but a sparkling gemstone instead, and I think that’s why my songs feel so precious and almost spiritual to me. It feels like nothing short of a miracle that I somehow produced this really beautiful thing when that was not my intention at all. Like, where did this incredible song even come from? I truly have no idea.
As for whether the themes will change, probably and probably not. I have a long-term vision for an autobiographical coming-of-age album that spans my late twenties and early thirties. As my life changes, the stories will change too. But I suspect I'll always be interested in longing, fantasy, loneliness, hope, and all the messy ways human beings try to make sense of themselves.
What artists are currently inspiring the music that you're making?
For songwriting, Olivia Rodrigo is a huge influence. I love how raw and confessional she is, and how willing she is to talk about the ugly, embarrassing, irrational parts of being human. It also genuinely matters to me that she's part Asian. Growing up, I admired artists like Avril Lavigne, Hayley Williams, and Taylor Swift, but some part of me felt that path wasn't available to someone who looked like me. Seeing Olivia do it made it feel possible.
I also appreciate how open she is about awkwardness, insecurity, and social anxiety. As someone who's pretty awkward herself, it's refreshing to see an artist embrace those qualities instead of pretending to be effortlessly cool all the time.
Taylor Swift, especially during the Fearless and Speak Now eras, is probably my other biggest songwriting influence. I love songs that tell stories, evolve over time, and take the listener somewhere emotionally. I have a short attention span, so I don't love hearing the exact same chorus repeated four times. I want songs that build, shift, crescendo, and reveal something new. That's probably why I'm so obsessed with bridges.
Production-wise, I draw heavily from the music I grew up on: Avril Lavigne, Paramore, Ashlee Simpson, The Veronicas, All Time Low, We the Kings, Boys Like Girls, and that whole early-2000s pop-rock era. I love guitars, I love big hooks, and I love songs that feel emotionally explosive. That's the lane I naturally gravitate toward.
Was there a particular band, artist, or concert that inspired you to get into music?
This is a little embarrassing, but I didn't realize I was even allowed to make music until I heard Olivia Rodrigo's "scared of my guitar."
The song is about being afraid to pick up a guitar because all your subconscious thoughts start surfacing as songs, and it was the first time it clicked for me that a "real" song could start with someone sitting alone in a room with a guitar in their lap. I'd done exactly that throughout my life, but I assumed it was just a silly hobby. I had this weird belief that real songs were manufactured in studios by professional songwriters and then handed to talented singers who'd been discovered on American Idol or something.
I was genuinely clueless about how music was actually made. The first time I stepped into a recording studio and learned that vocals could be comped from multiple takes, my mind was blown. I truly thought everyone was expected to sing an entire song perfectly from beginning to end!
The funny thing is that music has always been lurking in the background of my life. In middle school I'd secretly make songs in GarageBand and load them onto my iPod. In high school, my friends and I recorded joke songs in the school computer lab and burned them onto CDs. Our “band” was called Enraged Rainbow Okapis and our album was called turtle babies. The music was objectively terrible (we made an entire song where we repeatedly chanted “omelettes, pancakes, belgian waffles” in this Gregorian chant style, and we did another song where we took the GarageBand sample called “Brontosaurus Wail” and chopped it up and did weird things to it) but we had an amazing time making it.
Looking back, maybe part of me always wanted to do this. It just took me almost thirty years to realize it was an option.
What do you do to prepare for a show? Any rituals, exercises, or pre-show routines?
I actually have never performed live before, but I did just get invited to perform for the first time in my life in Brooklyn on July 7th with Breaking Sound, just three days before my debut EP comes out! Right now my primary preparation strategy is trying not to have a panic attack.
I came to music unusually late and had no formal background before I started writing songs in my bedroom, so performing has always felt intimidating. Recording my first song, "make you weep," was only the second time I'd ever sung in front of another person. The first was a voice lesson I'd signed up for a month earlier because I was convinced my voice was beyond help and wanted a professional opinion. I remember filling out the intake form and basically writing, "Everything is wrong with my voice. Please tell me if there's any hope for me." When I got there, I was so nervous it took me ten or fifteen minutes to actually sing. I spent most of the lesson facing the wall because I couldn't make eye contact while doing it. It genuinely felt like I was having a panic attack.
The same thing happened when I recorded “make you weep.” I remember feeling this lump rise up in my throat and I felt like I couldn’t even speak and I was shaking uncontrollably and everything. But funnily enough, the vocal takes from that day are the ones that made it into the final version of the song. I never re-recorded the vocals, and listening back, I’m pretty proud of how well I delivered that song despite having had a full-fledged panic attack earlier in the session.
Thankfully I've gotten a little better since then. These days I do normal singer things like staying hydrated and using a vocal steamer. The vocal steamer helps, although it always gets funny looks from Uber drivers because it's enormous and makes a loud hissing sound. From a distance it looks like either the world's biggest vape or a portable CPAP machine.
Beyond that, I'm still figuring it out. Ask me again after July 7th and hopefully I'll have a much better answer.
What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?
My career just started, so even calling it a "career" still feels a little strange! The coolest part hasn't been the numbers. Streams, followers, monthly listeners, and likes all feel somewhat abstract to me. The internet is weird. I'm out here liking the same grainy video of a pigeon and a duck hanging out every single time it appears in my feed, so I know firsthand how little a like can mean.
The moment everything felt real happened when someone commented on my Instagram and said the guy sitting next to them on a plane had recommended my music. That absolutely broke my brain. Neither of these people knew me. They weren't friends, family members, coworkers, or people who felt obligated to be supportive. One complete stranger had told another complete stranger, "You should check out this artist," and somehow that artist was me.
The idea that something that started as a messy Photobooth demo recorded alone in my bedroom eventually became part of a real conversation between two strangers in the world is still the most surreal thing that's happened to me.
If you could tour with any musical act, past or present, who would it be and why?
Honestly I would love to open for Olivia Rodrigo. The likelihood of that ever happening is less than zero, but that would be such a dream. If it isn't obvious by now, I'm a huge fan. She's been my number-one Spotify artist every year since SOUR came out in 2021. It might be a little embarrassing to be so influenced by someone almost an entire decade younger than me, but she's been writing songs far longer than I have so I'm giving myself a pass. I actually didn’t get to go the SOUR tour because Ticketmaster decided I wasn't a "verified fan," which remains one of the greatest injustices of my lifetime, but I did eventually catch the GUTS tour in Paris while I happened to be traveling in Europe and it was incredible getting to see her live.
There’s just so much to admire about her not just as an artist, but also as a person. She’s always speaking out about injustices in the world, advocating for marginalized communities, empowering women and girls, and repeatedly standing up for what’s right. At the risk of sounding parasocial, she also just seems very humble and funny and down-to-earth and I feel like it would be so fun to hang out with her.
Beyond that, touring with any of the pop rock or pop punk artists that shaped my childhood would be incredible: Avril Lavigne, Paramore, The Veronicas, The Pretty Reckless, All Time Low, We the Kings, Boys Like Girls, Green Day. My music naturally lives in the space between pop and rock. There will probably always be guitars in my songs, but I'm equally obsessed with giant hooks and catchy choruses, so those artists feel like the perfect fit.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
Yes! My debut EP, dopamine rush, is coming out July 10 and I’m so excited! At its core, it's a coming-of-age story disguised as a pop rock record. Across six songs, I trace my journey from believing that love could fix everything to realizing that I was using romance the way other people use drugs, alcohol, work, or any other distraction: as a temporary escape from pain.
That's where the title dopamine rush comes from. The songs explore the intoxicating belief that another person can save me or complete me or transform me in some way, and the gradual realization that what I’ve been chasing this whole time wasn’t actually love in the healthy and sustainable sense, but escapism. Like a real dopamine rush, these connections can feel euphoric and almost spiritual, but they’re fleeting.
Long-term, this EP is only the first chapter. I have a growing collection of unreleased songs and a larger vision for an autobiographical concept album where I dive deeper into my own pain and dissatisfaction, come to terms with what I’m trying to run away from, and face that discomfort head-on instead of trying to run away from it. dopamine rush is where that story begins.