KC Star & Austen the Poet Drift into Heartache on In My Dreams

11/07/2025 111 26 5

When You’re Half-Asleep and Still Lying to Yourself

I didn’t need to read the press release to know what this one was about. KC Star’s In My Dreams sounds like that quiet moment after everyone leaves the party. When you’re staring at a half-empty glass and realizing the thing you miss isn’t coming back. That’s where KC Star and Austen the Poet are writing from. Not the break-up. The echo of it.

Released on July 11th, this dream-pop track feels like it was built out of scraps. Torn-out letters, unspoken lines, the kind of thoughts you only say in the safety of your own head. Or in a song. KC and Austen know that terrain well. They’ve been circling it together across genres – rap, pop-rock, and now In My Dreams.

This is the first time I’ve spent real time with KC Star’s music. No idea how I missed the earlier stuff – eight EPs don’t exactly whisper past you. But maybe it’s this track that found me at the right time. This one lays down the armor. It’s exposed. A track soaked in what-ifs and maybes, padded in harmony and synths. I just love it!

KC Star In My Dreams – Two Voices, Same Wound

The song opens with a dream – because where else would you keep the things that no longer exist? KC sings it first: a late-night phone call, a voice saying “let’s try again.” I’ve had that dream too. Most of us have, whether we admit it or not. Then reality slaps you in the face somewhere around the line, “I knew my heart would break as soon as I awake.”

Austen enters later, not as a guest, but as someone with their own version of the same nightmare. His verse isn’t louder or sadder – it’s somehow parallel. “Your hand in mine, you pull me in real close.” That line hit harder than I expected, maybe because it’s not necessarily tragic. It’s tender, the way that intimacy stays lodged in the muscle memory.

There’s something honest in the way their voices blend. Just two people singing what they mean. KC brings that wide-eyed vulnerability, Austen slips in with the weight of reflection. The chorus is simple – “In my dreams, we’ll always be together” – but there’s weight in the simplicity. You don’t need a metaphor when you’re already bleeding on the mic.

Where Regret Lives, and Why We Keep Visiting

Then comes the bridge – “Still sending letters from the brink of my mind.” I’ve had names stuck in the margins of things I’ve written, long after I stopped saying them out loud. Like everyone else, right? I’ve written a hundred things I’ll never send. Notes I’ve deleted, rewrote, deleted again. And not because they weren’t true – because I knew they were. That’s the energy here.

The production floats, never forces. Synths ripple, drums pulse just enough to hold your breath steady. There’s a line about wishing for wings. I didn’t hear it as fantasy. I heard it as a way out, or maybe a way back. A thought you carry when you’re too tired to carry anything else. KC Star, for all his glitter and pop instincts, knows when to pull back. And Austen, well – he just tells you how it felt, and lets it hang.

By the time they repeat “Did I even cross your mind?” on the outro, the question isn’t meant for anyone else. It’s rhetorical, and quite haunting. Because some people never leave your mind, even after they’ve left your life. Follow KC Star and Austen the Poet on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify – and wherever your search options guides you.