This In My Room session is part of a new Scene Report on Dunedin. Check out the series here.
Niamh Crooks performed a stunning In My Room session from her bedroom for our new Dunedin series.
She performed her song “Open-Ended Conversations”, which she says is “about a friendship ending with a lot left unsaid.”
“I wrote the first half from my point of view, and the second verse from the other person’s,” Crooks says. “I thrive off communication, so when there’s none of that and little to no closure, there are so many thoughts left up in the air, leaving me with an open-ended conversation.”
Hailing from a city more widely known for indie rock music, Crooks wants to be a breakout pop artist from Ōtepoti.
Winning the Spark Open Audition competition two years ago at the age of 18 was a good start, and she’s kept up the hard work since then.
Her debut EP, Blush, dropped in 2024, a landmark moment for the independent musician.
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“It was a stressful thing to navigate independently, but it was a really cool experience and [I] have had a lot of support behind me,” she recently told us.
“I’m so stoked. The collaborations that I’ve done with people on there — it would not be complete without the people that I have met along the way. So I’m so stoked.”
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Crooks’ style of pop follows the successful blueprint of her favourite artists — Lorde and Billie Eilish. She cites the former’s Pure Heroine as a seminal album, while recent recording sessions have seen her use Halsey and Zara Larsson as sonic reference points.
Now back in Dunedin following a brief stay in Christchurch, Crooks is glad to be making music in her hometown again.
“I’ve done the whole moving away thing and honestly I think having Dunedin as my home base actually seems to be working out better for me,” she said in our interview.
“I can save a whole heap of money for music stuff while I’m at home… with the competition I was able to get a bunch of recording equipment so [I] can record at home… that’s actually sometimes way easier than sitting in the studio and your vocals aren’t feeling right and then you just don’t get the takes you want.”
Watch Crooks’ full In My Room session above.
