Dom Dolla sat down with Tiga and host Tia Ho for a rare half-hour interview that covered everything from mental health and studio habits to pub discos and the mechanics behind some of his biggest records. Filmed in a wood-paneled basement, the conversation played out more like a chat between friends than a formal Q&A.
OCD Shapes Dom's Studio Perfectionism
The most revealing moment came when Dom spoke candidly about living with OCD, a condition he described as debilitating at times and far beyond the clean-freak stereotype. In the studio, it manifests as an inability to sit with doubt: the fear of not giving a record its best possible chance drives his obsessive testing of every vocal, drum and bassline. Near enough, he says, is not good enough. Tiga admitted he once texted "it's good enough" mid-project and was swiftly overruled.
Tiga brought the opposite brain to the table. After recognizing his own ADHD in Gabor Maté's Scattered Minds during lockdown, he now describes collaboration as a search for a traffic cop, someone whose discipline turns his flood of scattered ideas into order. In Dom, he found one, and something more: where Tiga always viewed Max Martin-style hit-making as voodoo, Dom showed him someone who actually unpacks the mechanics.
'Don't Worry Baby' Was Built for 40,000 People
That chemistry produced 'Don't Worry Baby', which was engineered with a deadline in mind. The record was built to premiere at Dom's historic Allianz Stadium show in Sydney, and writing for 40,000 people pushed the sound design into some of the most aggressive territory of his career. The stadium visuals inspired the alien and laser imagery, which fed back into the lyrics: a fantasy of extraterrestrials rescuing us from a deteriorating world, deliberately spun as hope rather than doom.
Dom also revealed his voice is on 'Don't Worry Baby' after all, layered quietly beneath Tiga's because his collaborator didn't send enough takes. An 11-year-old also gets partial credit for the final record: Tiga's daughter walked away humming the female vocal hook after a single listen of the demo, which settled the argument over whether it stayed.
It's not the first time Dom has smuggled himself into his own record. When Tia asked which of each other's songs they wish they'd made, Tiga picked 'girl$', prompting Dom to confess that the robot-sounding B-section is actually his own processed voice. Dom admits he hates the sound of his own voice on records, always pitching it up or processing it beyond recognition, and hiring singers to perform his toplines word for word.
Pub Discos, Strategic Mustaches, and 'Rhyme Dust' Nearly Shelved
Dom explained the concept of a "pub disco" to Tia: take an old Melbourne pub, black out the windows, throw in a couple of strobes and a smoke machine, charge five bucks at the door and three bucks a pint. That's where Dom cut his teeth, sneaking in underage before graduating to running the parties himself. The youngest in his year level, he grew his now-signature mustache at 17 in a failed bid to sneak into Byron Bay nightclubs, and it hasn't left his top lip since.
The confession that will surprise fans most: 'Rhyme Dust', the Q-Tip-sampling MK collaboration that became one of the defining club records of Dom's career, got almost no crowd response for six months. He came close to shelving it entirely before posting it online, where it found its audience and went viral.
The full interview is available to watch now.
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