Devon Johanningmeier was moved to tears watching KATSEYE rehearse.
In May, the Los Angeles-based pop artist, who makes music as Devon Again, was all the way in Australia at an industry showcase when she had the chance to catch the HYBE x Geffen supergroup warming up. “It’s really insane to watch them up close,” she says over a video call a few days after returning from the trip. It wasn’t their synchronicity or dance skill that brought her to sudden tears, but their subtle silent communication, seamless and embodied. “They’re all doing it together,” she says. “They’re experiencing this [industry] machine as a group.”
Johanningmeier’s hair, dyed a bright blue, matches the background of the surrealist painting behind her, depicting a rabbit performing alone on a stage. Like the rabbit, and unlike KATSEYE, Devon is a solo act. Recently, the mid-20s singer has been searching for any semblance of grounding in an industry that often flattens artists into memes and chart statistics. In May, she was announced as the latest signee to superproducer Dan Nigro’s label Amusement Records, in partnership with Interscope. Her career has quickly expanded well beyond the scope of her adolescent bedroom daydreams, when she was a mere Paramore superfan releasing music on Soundcloud in the Denver suburbs.
“I wanted to do this my whole life,” she says. “It's really scary to think about failing in a large capacity.”
This fall, Johanningmeier will be playing her strange, brain tingling, and cinematic pop songs for packed arenas as an opener for Olivia Rodrigo, a fan and friend. Another close supporter is Chappell Roan, who herself skyrocketed to main pop girl status after opening for Rodrigo. Both Roan and Rodrigo, Johanningmeier says, have been helping her prepare for life in the blinding spotlight. Hanging outside with Rodrigo has shown her that “this version of life is very, very different from mine,” but “watching Olivia be very boundaried and still comfortable in public, shows me that you just adjust if you have to,” she says.
Still, she struggles with what fame will mean seriously, given how fantastical the scenario seems: “It’s such a specific fear: What will happen if I get famous?”
“I wanted to do this my whole life.”
Devon Again has called a lot of places home. When she was in high school she moved into a Colorado sober living facility with her mom who was undergoing treatment at the time. In 2019, after graduating high school, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue music and lived in an artist community off of Melrose where residents were given a “cubby for a human body” to sleep in. Later, she moved to a garage also off Melrose but this one was connected to a home. That’s where her music career began to take off in earnest.
In 2020, she filmed a video of her singing over a polka beat that went wildly viral on TikTok. She recounts the initial label and manager meeting she had with “so many men” with some embarrassment. “I would get on the phone and be like, What does this mean?” she says. “'What is an A&R?'”
Eventually, one of those early industry connections led her to the producer Cameron Hale, (Khalid, Sadie Jean) who helped her create her first official song, “Suburbia,” and her first full EP, PEE. Colored by a squeaky and warped soundscape, the EP showcased Johanningmeier’s ability to craft pop melodies that feel familiar, yet inspire your full attention. On rock-pop driver “Broke Mine Too,” she sings about feeling regret over a distorted synth line and drum break that could be at home in a coming-of-age flick. “І've nеvеr fеlt ѕо uglу іn а раrtу drеѕs,” goes its opening line. “А lіttlе tоо drunk іn mу kіtсhen feelin' ѕісk 'bout thе shit І ѕаіd.”
Her true breakout moment came a full three years after with In Order, her 2025 EP released on Pizzaslime Records and produced with Jon Buscema. Written about her experience touring PEE, the EP is peppered with details about cars, nature, and life on the road, which imbues the project with the fleeting sensorial sensation of travel. That said, making the EP was slow going. Grieving a heartbreak and outpatient therapy dragged the recording process on for years. She’d work with Buscema three to four times a week and “a lot of [the time] nothing came out of [the sessions],” she says. “The songs that ended up being special happened once in a blue moon when we were really locked in.”
The fact that these tracks felt like miracles is reflected in their sonic and lyrical enormity. Each song on In Order sounds like either a finale or intro of a longer album. Its most viral hit, “cherry cola,” soars to a credits-rolling level of euphoria as what sounds like thousands of Devon Agains sing, “Lovin' you is just like sipping on straight syrup, sugar, sticky soda / Cover me in candy, I'm so lucky that I get to know ya,” over rising guitar.
The entire project is covered in these sensorial lyrics that blend emotional feelings with cinematic images, like on the sleepier but still searing, “Never Goes Away” (“I miss you like hot rain / Like red dirt / Like a river”). Its allusions to nature, epic yet relatable, remind me of how my adolescent feelings used to feel, before the doldrums of adulthood sapped some sense of wonder from my heart.
Johanningmeier chalks her songs’ widescreen emotionality up to the main character syndrome endemic to growing up as an only child. “I thought my life was really important and I was the only one experiencing it,” she says with a laugh. She’s matured, but somehow retained that sense of self-narrative, which is probably why her music feels like an antidote to numbness.
On TikTok, the chorus of “Cherry Cola” has become a digital anthem for pure feeling. In October 2024, after she put out “Never Goes Away” and Dan Nigro shared it on his Instagram, her Interscope deal began to take shape. She never thought she could sign to a major but, “if Dan believes in me enough to sign me, that means something,” she says.
“All you have to do is continue.”
Roan, who she opened for in 2022, has also been in her corner, pushing her on.
“When I’m like, Should I quit? [Chappell] is like, ‘No, don’t.’ That’s the only advice that’s valuable,” Johanningmeier says. In November, she’ll play her first show with Rodrigo at Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia: capacity 21,000.
“All you have to do is continue.”
