By Catrina Knox
When I heard that the prosecutors in New York were reopening the case of the alleged gang rape at Cornell University, SkyDxddy’s debut album, TRAUMACORE (RAW & UNCUT) (2025) took on a whole different meaning for me. On the off chance that you’ve been living under a rock, the recent Cornell case centers on seven fraternity members who drugged and raped a female student. They faced only essay writing as punishment, while the victim’s life was permanently altered. This stark disparity highlights how institutional systems routinely shield men under the soft guise of having “made a mistake” or with the intent of protecting their promising futures. While these male perpetrators are granted empathy and a path to redemption, female survivors are left to absorb the quiet, devastating consequences alone - abandoning spaces that should have been safe and carrying the long-term trauma without any resolution. In response to public outrage actress Florence Pugh famously noted she was “enraged by schools protecting boys, in fear of their futures being wrecked” - a sentiment that echoes a broader cultural outrage over how institutions prioritize male power over female safety.
Similarly, SkyDxddy, born Skylar DeMarino, grew up in a toxic living environment and was a survivor of a life-altering physical assault. Her career shifted dramatically while working a day job for Live Nation after hearing her coworkers casually make insensitive jokes about sexual violence and consent. Feeling that silence meant complicity, she reached a breaking point. Her partner encouraged her to channel her processing through music, so she began uploading raw, unfiltered tracks to TikTok. Her viral 2019 single “Triggered” struck a nerve, gathering millions of views in an instant and establishing her as a central figure in a new movement.
From the second she began writing and producing her music, politeness left the scene. She chose the stage name SkyDxddy as a satirical power move, combining her first name and daddy. She explained in an interview that she grew up in a controlling household where men held all the authority, so calling herself daddy is a way of taking back the power and refusing to ever be controlled again. Her emergence as an artist coincided with “traumacore,” which was originally an internet subculture characterized by pastel visuals juxtaposed with dark text about child neglect, sexual abuse, and more. However, in SkyDxddy’s hands, it evolved to become a musical genre by blending heavy alt-pop, cinematic trap beats, metal riffs, and confessional hip-hop. Released during Mental Health Awareness Month, TRAUMACORE (RAW & UNCUT) serves as her artistic manifesto. Over the 13-track album, she doesn’t inspect trauma from a safe distance; she drags the listener right into it, forcing them to scrutinize the feelings they tried to ignore.
The record attempts to build a “chosen family” for survivors of abuse, violence, and mental health struggles. Narratively, it moves from the claustrophobia of hypervigilance and panic through explosive anger and eventually climbs towards self-advocacy. While many other confessional pop records fall into neat resolutions, this project refuses to present healing as a linear journey, but rather as the loud, messy, daily struggle just to catch your breath.
In the opening track “Choker,” eerie, brooding synth lines collide with heavy distorted guitar riffs while SkyDxddy sings with a frantic urgency: “I feel it tightening, baby I wear it like a choker.” It’s a visceral, suffocating metaphor for living with PTSD - the relentless sensation of being strangled by your own memory while attempting to act normal for everyone else. It is unvarnished, unsettling, and completely deliberate.
Formally, the production relies on stark and jarring contrasts to echo a fractured mindset, and mid-tempo pop structures are repeatedly disrupted by aggressive, industrialized beat drops and abrasive guitar work. On “Mortal Kombat,” an anthem of resilience, driving basslines and rapid-fire percussion create an audio battleground while SkyDxddy sneers: “Try to walk all over me, then watch me as I bounce back.” Her voice shifts quickly from quiet, spoken-word murmurs to full-throated screams, catching the unpredictable mood swings of someone stuck in survival mode.
The album’s midpoint track, “Sirens,” opens with static radio broadcasts about sexual abuse and blaring sirens before flipping the dark, seductive siren mythology on its head. Built on pulsing beats and layered vocals, the track captures the disorienting feeling of being drawn into a trap. SkyDxddy moves from smooth, alluring verses into raw, raspy hooks, channeling an intense refusal to be silenced. Instead of portraying the siren as a villain, she turns the myth into a force of reckoning against abusers, recasting vulnerability as power.
This tension matches a broader cultural shift in the way younger audiences have started to connect with art. When institutions like healthcare or education fail to offer real support for survivors, spaces on TikTok and Instagram often become informal and insufficient substitutes. When SkyDxddy screams over the bassline, she’s performing a release that thousands of listeners repeat privately in their bedrooms or cars. The music she creates acts like an emotional external hard drive, carrying the weight that feels too heavy for one person to hold alone.
TRAUMACORE isn’t an easy listen, but the discomfort it brings is exactly the point. Unlike mainstream pop projects that polish heartbreak into clean radio ballads, the production is intentionally rough. Tracks like “HER,” which tackles body dysmorphia, and “Not Guilty,” a direct attack on domestic violence, pull no punches. At times, the sheer weight of these topics can feel overwhelming to a casual listener, but for an audience that constantly feels hidden, the refusal to soften the edge is precisely what works.
While most fanbases center on the artist, SkyDxddy’s audience functions more like a mutual-aid network. By pairing her releases with active advocacy and constant interaction, she has managed to turn isolated suffering into a shared experience, forceful enough to break through the silence of society. The pain isn’t romanticized - it’s turned directly against the isolation that abuse feeds on.
The album reaches its thematic peak in the final track, “Best Part Of The Story.” Here, she stops treating her trauma like an external enemy and starts accepting those survival instincts as part of herself: “My darkside, she strikes again / She always comes to my defense.” It is a moment of profound psychological integration where she looks in the mirror and understands that shunning the broken parts of herself won’t help her heal and move on. The hypervigilance and anger that once looked like destructive symptoms are finally recognized as protective responses that kept her alive while her world died around her.
Ultimately, TRAUMACORE is more than just a collection of cathartic alt-pop hooks. It demonstrates how independent and untested singer-songwriters can bypass traditional gatekeepers to build genuine support systems for their listeners. And this matters in a world where a whole group chat of men refuse to speak out on behalf of a woman, men who, when she gets shamed, still get an education. SkyDxddy builds a refuge out of the noise, showing that surviving isn’t about staying quiet or waiting around to be rescued - it’s about grabbing the mic and turning everything all the way up.
