San Luis Obispo, CA · country-pop

Dasha

2 festivals played ↓

'Austin' turned a Cal Poly pop writer into country's viral line-dance story — TikTok twang with real hooks.

Dasha was born Anna Dasha Novotny in San Luis Obispo and is of Czech descent. She started musical theater at five, studied ballet and hip hop, and won national poetry competitions before picking up guitar and piano at eight. Her father, PJ, became her first manager, booking her at coffee shops and wineries by age ten, and her brother Bardo, a guitarist for Beauty School Dropout, later helped produce her records. She released her first song at thirteen.

She attended San Luis Obispo High School, performing in productions including Guys and Dolls, Footloose, Annie and Bye Bye Birdie, and later enrolled at Belmont University. She left school when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, choosing to pursue music full time instead of finishing her degree.

Her early influences ranged across pop and R&B, including Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Bazzi, Dominic Fike, Jeremy Zucker, Kacey Musgraves, Pink Sweat$, Role Model and Tove Styrke. That mix shaped the pop songwriting she carried into country music, favoring clear structures and hooks over strict genre rules.

She signed with Quadio Records, a Disruptor Records subsidiary, after releasing "Don't Mean a Thing" in 2020, then put out the EP $hiny Things in 2021 followed by the album Dirty Blonde in 2023. Her turn toward country came with the single "Austin" in November 2023, which reached the top ten in Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom and led to a deal with Warner Records.

The album What Happens Now? followed in February 2024. That year she performed "Austin" at the CMT Music Awards in Austin, Texas, at Allsång på Skansen in Sweden, and at the Canadian Country Music Awards, her first award-show performance. A second EP, Anna, arrived in 2025.

Read more

country-pop