doris dana is the sound project of Mónica Mesa, a Colombian-born artist raised in Miami and currently based in North Carolina. Named after Doris Dana — editor, lover, and confidante of Chilean Nobel laureate poet Gabriela Mistral — the project takes as its quiet premise the power of unspoken bonds, hidden intimacies, and the women who exist just behind the light of history. It is, at its core, a practice of deep listening and careful feeling.

Mesa began building the doris dana universe through a series of self-released and small-label recordings, including improvisaciones (2021), cinematic memories (Impresión, 2022) — a fictional soundtrack steeped in dark electronics and Tarkovskian atmosphere — and sentimental atmospheres (Noir Age, 2022). These early works established their signature approach: field recordings, slow-moving drones, whispered vocals, and sparse electro-acoustic textures that map the emotional geography of liminal spaces.

Her most celebrated work to date, reveries (Somewhere Press, 2024), marked a significant step into the wider experimental music community. Drawing from Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater's Thought Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation — a text that influenced painters Hilma af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky — the album transposes the idea of psychic auras into sound, asking whether love or longing can be communicated outside of words. Boomkat praised it as one of the most delicately constructed and emotionally nuanced records of the year. This prolific period continued with nostalgia (Enmossed, 2025), an hour-long meditation on decelerated boleros and worn-tape atmospheres, and wild at heart (Oscilla Sound, 2025), a set of lysergic, Lynchian daydreams featuring spoken word performances by Andalusian poet Marta Núñez Pouzols and multidisciplinary artist Susannah Simpson — an elegy of sorts, stretching the boundaries of the night and quietly confusing dream and reality. Throughout, Mesa has contributed to a number of notable compilations, including Collage (Second End Records), The Black Hill, The Glass Sky (Somewhere Press), and the Soak series — further cementing her presence within the international experimental music community.

Alongside her solo work, Mesa is one half of bad lsd trips (with Domingo Castillo Flores), an ongoing collaborative project that runs parallel to their doris dana practice. She also hosts No era sólida, a bimonthly radio show on Radio TNP, where she curates experimental sound designed to spark introspection — weaving together musique concrète, ambient, and minimalism into immersive listening portals.