Bossie

To reach the upper echelons of mainstream superstardom, a pop star must possess several innate qualities: an ability to sing, an ear for massive hooks and an ability to rock an array of multi-coloured wigs.

Occasionally, successful pop stars also need to have their shit together.

When Toronto-based singer/songwriter, music video director and occasional Hollerado member Anne Douris decided to concentrate on making the “poppiest music possible,” the result was Bossie, a persona that inhabits that late-20s in-between phase Britney Spears captured so poignantly in the song I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman.


“Bossie is not exactly me,” Douris tells NOW over the phone. “It’s a character that embodies this idea of what pop is, and awkwardly pretends that she's supposed to be it.”

The idea for Bossie began last year as the other three members of her scrappy guitar-pop group Stella Ella Olla began touring with their other bands. Wishing she had a project she could call her own, she recorded a song called Meteor and uploaded it to Bandcamp under the name Token.

London-based DIY Magazine posted the song and it made the rounds. Labels started showing interest and, feeling she was on to something, Douris rebranded as Bossie, hunkered down in her Junction studio and re-recorded the single along with a debut album that she is now mixing and hoping to release late in the year or early next.

Sonically, she wants Bossie to have a vintage-but-polished feel.

“I wanted to try my hand at making the poppiest pop that I could,” she says. “I’m generally drawn to anything that sounds like it could be in a video game or an old DOS computer game. A lot of the synths came from that.”

Asked which pop acts she most admires, she cites the defunct, discofied New York indie pop group LCD Soundsystem.

“They worked with these lo-fi, MIDI synths that sounded so rich, and the lyrical content was just so honest. It gave people the benefit of the doubt,” she says, adding that she found something comforting in frontman James Murphy’s unlikely pop hero image. “I’m not a trained singer by any means, so I’m glad people like that exist in the world.”

The single-take music video for Meteor is a send-up of pop video conventions, with Douris enduring clouds of exploding glitter, prodding makeup brushes and overly excited backup dancers. Friends and collaborators from Tokyo Police Club, July Talk and Hollerado all make cameos.

“The idea came from realizing I had to be front and centre in this video and being uncomfortable with that. I have to get used to being in the centre of the frame as this animated pop artist,” she says. “[The video is] a bit satirical and it’s meant to be a critical look at how we present pop music and the people at the core of an act.

“When you look at a huge female pop artist like Katy Perry or Taylor Swift, they are essentially characters who are spun as real people,” she continues. “I have nothing but admiration for them. I think they’re incredibly strong, hardworking artists but I’m never going to be one those personalities because I’m much too uncomfortable.”

Second single There Will Be Time more earnestly unpacks her anxieties around the creeping pressures to grow up, settle into adulthood and become the best version of herself. At 26, her 30s are in sight and she feels a need to assure herself that “there will be time to get it right.”

“Should I be a grownup yet? Should I know what I’m doing?” she says with a nervous laugh. “It’s OK to not know and be uncomfortable in your own skin sometimes and take time to figure it out.”

Douris makes her live debut as Bossie at Smiling Buddha on Thursday (September 10), backed by a three-piece band and an array of projections and videos she's created especially for the event. A corporate editor by day, she also directs, produces and edits music videos and short films and works as a graphic designer. With Bossie, she's able to combine the various skill sets accrued through her multi-hypenate freelance lifestyle.

“I work in a lot of different fields so I always get worried that I’m dividing my energy up and becoming mediocre at everything I do,” she says. “I’m trying to comfort myself and say it’s OK, I have time to figure this out. And now I have a way to connect with other people about that same anxiety.” - NOW Magazine

Bossie is Toronto pop artist Anne Douris. She got some positive attention for last year’s “Meteor,” a bass-driven groove that managed to be both wildly fun and deeply wistful, especially when paired with its humorous, glittery video. She’s getting ready to make her live debut next month, and it’s preceded by another excellent single called “There Will Be Time.” There are traces of Blondie in the way Bossie’s breathy vocals navigate the verse’s dark-tinged synth-bass undercurrent, but the roller-rink chorus is all Cyndi Lauper. It’s one of those genius pop songs that feels like an explosion of bright colors and good feelings. Listen below, where you’ll also find the “Meteor” video. - Stereogum

Anne Douris might be most familiar to Toronto indie-rock fans as a member of spunky power-pop outfit Stella Ella Ola and an occasional contributor to Hollerado, but she’s a bona fide multimedia threat: a director of videos and short films, a designer of posters and T-shirts, and the artist behind the Juno-nominated artwork for Hollerado’s 2013 album White Paint.

Douris’s latest artistic venture is Bossie, a candied (and often candy-coloured) pop-pixie alter ego responsible thus far for two devastatingly addictive Internet releases, last year’s delightful “Meteor” and the new “There Will Be Time,” plus a beguiling cover of White Town’s “Your Woman.” Nevertheless, she seems perfectly poised for international notoriety when her debut album surfaces this year or next.

The tunes are as sparkly and adorable as the glitter-drenched video clip for “Meteor,” and the eternally bewigged Douris possesses a slightly goofy, nerdy girl charm that’s sure to appeal to many a denizen of the global Geek Nation. Look out, Lights!

“I obsess over not knowing what I’m doing with my life,” emails Douris. “Then I play Nintendo for several hours to make myself feel better. Then I write a song about not knowing what I’m doing with my life, eat an entire bag of Haribo gummy bears for dinner (because I’m an adult and I make the decisions around here) and go to bed. Repeat Monday through Friday.”

What’s a song I need to hear right now?

“There Will Be Time.” A bittersweet synth-pop nugget about confronting the demons of adulthood that rivals Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me” as the summer’s most infectious, ’80s-derived single. Holy Cyndi Lauper! - Toronto Star

Toronto’s Bossie have well and truly announced themselves with ‘Meteor’. Not only is it hands down one of the more direct, glimmering synth pop tracks to emerge in the last few months - it also arrives with the most glittery thing this side of our July 2015 cover shoot with Wolf Alice.

Similar to that gold-covered ‘incident’ (permanently covering a photo studio in gold glitter will get you in trouble - don’t do it, kids), this clip sees Bossie’s Anne Douris starring in her own destructive adventure. It begins with a gentle flicker of magic dust, but by the end she’s covered in balloons, feathers, confetti, anything that can be thrown in her direction.

The Veronika Paz-directed video (self-produced by the band themselves) also contains cameos from Tokyo Police Club, Hollerado and July Talk members. Shout out to the showy guitar solos and miniature pony, too. “I inhaled a ton of glitter,” Douris gladly informs DIY. - DIY Magazine (UK)

Once you watch the video for Bossie’s debut single, “Meteor,” there is no turning back. In it, the Toronto-born singer-songwriter spends most of her time in front of a camera having a film crew drown her in buckets of glitter and confetti. At first it’s funny, then it becomes perplexing, then—when Bossie’s clothes, face and tongue become lacquered with sparkles and feathers—you realize the shrewd statement she’s trying to make. Women in pop music get put through the wringer as far as image is concerned, and as exuberant and glamorous as it looks, the message is so far removed from reality that it can hurt. What makes things even more complicated is that the choruses in “Meteor”—and Bossie’s soon-to-be released album Not Pictured—are the kind of aural confections you could imagine Britney Spears, Selena Gomez or Kesha singing.

So why would 27-year-old Bossie—whose real name is Anne Douris—dare to blast, deconstruct and mock a pop music industry she is desperately trying to get into? “It’s technically not me,” she says, noting that Bossie is a character she’s creating to unveil the inaccuracy behind pop personas. “There’s just no way I can be that girl,” she says. Bossie is referring to the Taylor Swifts, Beyoncés and Katy Perrys of the world. “I’m not that cool, smooth-talking, really-comfortable-in-my-body kind of girl. All that stuff we try to project onto women musicians in general—that’s just not gonna fly cause I’m an awkward, early 20s, uncomfortable person. Trust me, there are lots of us out there, so I thought my act would be so put on if I didn’t decide to drive it to the extreme.”

The concept of the video naturally came from Bossie, who has side hustles as a video director, animator, set designer, graphic designer, music producer and T-shirt designer for other bands and acts (including Hollerado, Zeus, and The Balconies). Her own inspirations are as wide-ranging as her occupations: electronic groups, such as New Order and Joy Division; ’90s TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and poets, such as Anne Carson. A song called “Three Dimensional”—which sounds like it should be on the soundtrack for an ’80s rom-com like Pretty in Pink or Earth Girls Are Easy­—is a love song about her Nintendo 64. However retro her influences are, many of Bossie’s tracks speak directly to her generation. A cut called “A Lot Like Love” speaks to the psychology of social media. “The song is about when I do things like go on Facebook or post a selfie and get a bunch of likes. Am I just trying to validate myself with this weird machine, or do I need to look elsewhere? It’s about the gratification and validation you get from somebody doing very little.”

Another track called “Post Teen” dips into the “twises” (a.k.a. twenties crisis) that Bossie and many of her friends seem to be facing. “We’re kind of at the weird middle part of our youth—a time when you don’t really know what to do or how to get out of what you are doing,” she says, speaking to the widespread issues of depression and displacement associated with coming of age. “The song is about feeling lost. Dr. Seuss calls it ‘The Slumps.’”

Bossie says her stage name is a reflection of the experiences she’s had in the studio. “The biggest problem that I’ve seen is women being shushed while working on their music and people saying things like, ‘You don’t know how to make a decision, you be quiet!’ I put a stop to that,” she says. “Musicians are basically entrepreneurs—you’re the boss of your business and if people don’t respect that, it’s not good for your work.” - Fashion Magazine