Bria Salmena Wrestles with Control on Big Dog

The songwriter and Orville Peck touring collaborator emerges from the periphery with effortless poise and a boldly singular vision.

by Cam Delisle

Published on March 26, 2025

The leap into solo artistry is never a simple one—particularly when your legacy (thus far) has been sculpted by the art of collaboration. In the symbiosis of a collective, each voice is part of a greater whole, a signal that resonates only through its mutual cadence. But when the chorus fades and it’s just you in the room, who owns the message? What happens when the echoes of others dissolve, leaving only a singular, unfiltered voice against the world?

Bria Salmena confronts these questions with quiet defiance on her debut solo offering, Big Dog—a fitting title for a project that bleeds fragmented intent. Though its title ultimately emerged through the lens of peer feedback, Salmena wrestled with its meaning for some time. At one point, she even considered “Kitty Cat Butterfly”—a whimsical phrase her niece would often repeat. “It felt so far removed from the core of the album,” she admits, highlighting the stark contrast between innocence and the weight of the music. “[The song] ‘Hammer’ was originally called ‘Big Dog,’” Salmena reveals, “but I knew that I didn’t want a title track on this record.” While validating the purpose of title tracks, she further explains her preference for a title that captures the album’s essence as a whole, rather than just one singular moment.

Stepping into the spotlight solo is daunting enough, but relinquishing control adds another layer of fear. For Salmena, this was especially true during the creation of the visuals for this project, a process she admits was a first for her in letting go of creative reins. “I didn’t want to feel as consumed as I had in the past… and although it was difficult, it was an exercise in letting my collaborators interpret things in their own way,” she shares. Allowing others into the fold of your vision is never simple, yet for Salmena, it proved to be a fortuitous choice, culminating in striking visuals for Big Dog’s first two singles, “Stretch the Struggle” and “Hammer.” The video for the aforementioned track unfolds with Salmena curled on her side across shifting landscapes—a visual that speaks for itself in its stark beauty. Directed by Matthew Tammaro and Rebecca Cianfrini, Salmena reflects on the process as a grueling yet rewarding journey. “The equipment he was using required me to be extremely still, and it wasn’t a green screen,” she says. “We literally shot on the ground of a demolition site… while Matthew directed the digger to be in frame.”

As Cindy Lee and Yves Tumor looped on rotation, Salmena reflects on the elusive search for Big Dog’s sound, a path she and longtime collaborator Duncan Hay Jennings revealed through trial and abstraction. “‘Closer to You’ felt like the moment that we nailed it down,” she explains, noting that while it wasn’t the first track to make the cut, it served as a crucial marker—one that signaled they should continue down that road. The track breathes with a Haim-like cinematic energy, shimmering between nostalgia and tension. “Love me tender or just leave,” she croons, a quiet ultimatum that echoes throughout the album’s exploration of self-assured solitude. Salmena reflects on her bond with Jennings as less of a collaboration and more of a familial rupture. “We fight like brother and sister… we constantly clash, but that push and pull was essential to carving out the sound we were after,” she confides, as though the discord itself became the blueprint.

Salmena describes the evolution of her sound as an “unconscious decision.” Big Dog, in turn, thrives on this authenticity, existing in the space where intention blurs into instinct. “I’m excited to see how these songs grow legs live,” she says with a sense of inevitability, as the horizon of her upcoming North American tour looms closer. It’s never easy to let the world hear something so near and dear to your heart, something that feels like an unearthing of your deepest feelings, but Salmena expresses her excitement, anticipation, and nervousness for her ongoing album cycle and live shows. Releasing Big Dog feels like an invitation to the void, a simultaneous confrontation between both herself and the world outside. As Salmena readies for her impending live shows, there’s an awareness that the music isn’t just an album—it’s a threshold. What comes next isn’t predetermined, it’s a dissonance that feeds the growth. Big Dog is both an ending and a beginning, and an unspoken promise that whatever happens next, it will be nothing short of unpredictable.