Dominique Way Turns a Wrong Turn Into a Pop Song

The Toronto singer-songwriter’s new single “Lady in the GPS” lands as her first solo release of the year, carrying the same early 2000s glow that defined her debut EP.

Dominique Way released “Lady in the GPS” on July 31, showing up that same day across new rel roundups alongside names like Ellie Goulding and Four Tet, a placement that puts her small, indie Cult Nation catalog in the same weekly conversation as consider bigger names. It marks her first standalone single since “Oh, Ana,” which arrived earlier this year, and follows a run of feat and one off tracks that have kept her steadily active without a full length record yet to her name.

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The title alone does a lot of work. A GPS voice is a strange kind of intimate stranger, calm and certain even when it is sending you the wrong way, and turning that into a song title suggests Way is still working the same vein of small, specific, slightly wry observe that carried her earlier songwriting. Full lyric and production details for the track were not avail at the time of writing, and rather than guess at what is not yet confirmed, that gap is flagged here plainly.

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Way grew up in Barrie, Ontario, and moved into her own apartment in Toronto a few years back, a shift she has described as the moment her music stopped being a side interest and started being the thing she actually built her life around. She graduated from St. Peter’s Catholic Secondary School in 2018 and has since signed with the Montreal based label Cult Nation, a roster that also includes Charlotte Cardin and Alicia Moffet.

Her debut EP, “Sprig,” arrived in the fall of 2024, co-written and co-produced with Grammy nominated producer Harper Gordon. Way has said the title doubles as a childhood nickname from her mother, and the project earned early placement on Spotify’s Fresh Finds Global and Apple Music’s “in my room” playlists, pulling in over a million streams within a couple of months of release. A companion project, “Sprig B-Sides,” followed in May 2025, described by Way as a quieter, more intimate counterpart to the first half of the EP. Since then she has released a scattering of standalone singles, including “Carolina in My Mind,” “Not In A Bad Way,” “Stranger To Me,” and “Smoke Jumper,” alongside an EP titled “Who Could Not Be Broken.”

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Across all of it, the throughline has been a specific kind of nostalgia, less a costume than a genuine reference point, pulling from the sound of early 2000s pop singer-songwriters while keeping the songwriting itself grounded in ordinary, present day detail. “Lady in the GPS” reads as a continuation of that instinct rather than a departure from it, another small, observed moment turned into three or four minutes of pop song.

For more on song, see Connie Diiamond: “Letter to My Fans” Is More Than a Song—It’s a Statement.

For more on wrong, see Review: Veeze – "Wrong Place, Wrong Time" (Official Music Video) + Surprise Mixtape "Y'all Won".

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From the DRIFT archive: A Review: Ian — “Aw Shit” (2025) Song Release