Since the start of her career, beabadoobee has built a strong reputation for genre fusion within the indie music space. Following the virality of her 2017 bedroom recording of “Coffee” and subsequent deal with Dirty Hit Records, beabadoobee has been a touchstone for the genre. Exploring various fields of indie music, she has gone from lo-fi acoustics to a more ’90s rock-inspired feel in albums like “Fake It Flowers,” and “This Is How Tomorrow Moves.” She even dipped into a dreamier sound in “Beatopia,” which has garnered over 5 billion streams.

On March 12, she released the single, “All I Did Was Dream of You” featuring The Marías. The track pulls back toward the hazier and more intimate textures of her older songs. It is less concerned with momentum than with mood, recalling the unhurried ache of her pre-2024 work, while additionally carrying a newly earned softness.

The collaboration with The Marías makes intuitive sense, given that the band’s members also live within the indie genre. The Marías, a Los Angeles-based band anchored by lead vocalist María Zardoya and drummer-producer Josh Conway, have built their reputation on a sound at the intersection of dream pop, jazz, and psychedelic soul. Following their nomination for Best New Artist at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, the band has earned a widening audience for their ability to produce cinematic yet deeply personal music. Pairing that yearning sensibility with beabadoobee’s instinct for emotional intimacy makes the collaboration gravitationally connected.

“All I Did Was Dream of You” opens with a nostalgic plucked electric guitar and, by doing so, sets the tone for the rest of the song. The first word, “Please,” offers a remarkably ingenious plea from beabadoobee. Without any scene or setting, the first lyric is already a request, already an admission — creating the sensation that listeners have tapped into something private and intimate.

“All I did was dream of you / Swimming in my mind again / Wanting to waste time again,” beabadoobee sings, only further emphasizing the quiet and persistent nostalgia in the track. There is no drama in it, but rather habitual longing. The song understands something true about how love lingers — not just as a memory one can choose to revisit, but a dream they cannot wake up from. beabadoobee’s voice syncs with the guitar, creating a quiet synchronicity that keeps the track grounded even as its atmosphere floats.

The song’s second verse, sung by María Zardoya, is where emotional complexity earns its keep. “Nightmares always feel like this / They swallow me / But I let go,” she sings. Touching on nightmares that don’t jolt you awake but instead pull you further into sleep, she adds to the song’s central metaphor of how the desire for love is a dream one cannot leave, even if it turns on you. The soft “Stay with me for a while” serves as a double entendre — at once a plea for a person to return and a portrait of how the mind, in its darkest moments, instinctively reaches towards those who formerly offered light. Zardoya delivers her verse with a soft understanding, which lends authenticity to the song.

The music video, filmed in Lithuania, extends the song’s wintry emotional register into something visual. Filmed in sub-2°F weather, various scenes include beabadoobee walking through snowy landscapes and a particular scene where she lies in a refrigerated meat display. The dream logic of someone consumed by obsession bleeds through as she conveys the cold feeling of being overlooked, put on display, and the quiet devastation of being “dead meat” to someone. The coldness of the setting reflects the way nostalgia works: something golden, remembered through frost.

The song closes where it began, emotionally if not literally. “Stay / Like the summer breeze / Don’t go / Don’t go,” the final plea is almost too simple, which is precisely what makes it work. It does not resolve the tension the verses built — it just names it plainly. beabadoobee’s voice lushly echoes with swelling synths and resonant drums as if the dream, finally, is too loud to sustain.

In comparison to beabadoobee’s broader discography, “All I Did Was Dream of You” is a distillation of the intimacy of her earlier work refracted into a softer, more luxuriant lens. For a single, it does not loudly announce itself and it does not need to. It arrives the way love lingers, without announcement, and then all at once. Like the dream “All I Did Was Dream of You” describes, it stays with you long after it ends.