Dota at the ZMF 2026

Dota is back with new songs, a new chapter that fits perfectly into the series of her previous albums, but still new, as if a previously unknown ingredient had appeared in the song lab.
What's nice is that it could just as well be the first DOTA record ever. You won't miss anything you like about Dota, but the music is even more minimalist, bouncier - adults would say: more contrasting. The lyrics go even more directly into the heart of darkness, are even more devotedly searching, even clearer in the unclear. Perhaps it is also a product of her preoccupation with the poetry of Mascha Kaléko, to whose musical realization she has dedicated two albums in the last three years.
DOTA - not in capital letters for nothing, because the name reflects more than just Dota Kehr's lyrical self, but also the community around her in which the music has been created for several years: guitarist Jan Rohrbach, drummer Janis Görlich, keyboardist Patrick Reising and bassist Alexander Binder. Together with this band, Dota Kehr arranges and records the songs. Together they write the DOTA formula on the blackboard: every word means at least its opposite, with question marks everywhere and hardly any exclamation marks.
The first single Einfach zu abgelenkt plays the DOTA game to perfection. The guitar sits by the lake in summer, the synth flickers. The drums dance stop-and-go, Dota sings as if she has to leave right away - about the fact that she can't commit and no one else can either. ADHD as a social diagnosis.
In Kettenkarussell, one of those songs that only DOTA can pull off - relaxed and tense at the same time, like a thoughtful bouncy ball - she sings: "Time to move on to something else / It's okay, I can't stand everyday life." And the band grooves to it, driving the singer as if to say: "One more round."
Question: What should songwriters sing about in these times?
Next question: What are "these times" anyway?
Dota also asked herself these questions in preparation for her new album. The answers lie in her path like signs on the road as soon as she starts working in earnest.
All it has ever taken is alert eyes, a voice that is her own and a heart that can hold more than her own retirement savings. Dota knows who she is and sees the things that connect her to and separate her from the world she lives in. Things that give her hope and things that repel her - which she confronts in her songs with honesty (Das wogende Meer) or biting irony (Milliardäre).

Lyrics: Francesco Wilking