Dennis is the name used by several unrelated acts, including a Dutch pop singer, a German Krautrock group and other short-lived or obscure projects. The Dutch artist is Denise ten Donselaar, a female pop singer from the Netherlands, born in 1984. She grows up around music in her father’s recording studio, where she watches musicians come and go, and later takes singing, piano and dance lessons from the age of 10. She forms her own band while still young, sings backing vocals for other artists, and performs regularly before deciding to focus on writing and singing her own songs.

Dutch pop artist

Dennis’s debut single is No Can Do, and her debut album is Her Name Is Dennis. The album combines rock, pop, dance and soul, and she describes her own work as pop music with a broad range of influences. Her stated musical range includes Nelly Furtado, Pink, Gwen Stefani and Gavin DeGraw, alongside Dinah Washington, James Taylor and Bonnie Raitt. She co-writes most of the album with Finnish producer Mikko Paavola, working with him in his Stockholm-based studio; she writes the melodies and lyrics while he contributes chord sequences.

Her songs draw on themes such as love, physical attraction, friendship, shopping, joy and sorrow, and she often uses self-mockery, double meanings and wordplay. Among the songs mentioned are Dragonfly, a ballad linked to a turning point in her life and marked by a dragonfly tattoo, Thirsty, Money and Song For Bas, which is a personal song about her nephew’s death at a young age. Her vocal style is described through performances of pop, rock and funk with power and versatility.

She says a trip to the United States, where she works with children from poor areas of New York, changes her outlook and leads her to take music more seriously. A serious car accident after her return in the Netherlands reinforces that decision, and she treats the dragonfly tattoo as a reminder of that moment.

German Krautrock group Dennis

Another Dennis is a German band active on the Hamburg scene for about 30 months. It is a three-piece or small collective involving musicians from Tomorrow’s Gift, Thirsty Moon, Kravetz and Xhol, with Frumpy drummer Carsten Bohn in charge; the band takes its name from his son. Rather than a fixed group, it exists in two different line-ups and records as a collection of jams and improvised encounters, later remixed and compiled.

The band’s album Hyperthalamus, released on Nova in 1975, is described as a blend of progressive, psychedelic and cosmic styles with free-rock, acid-jam and fusion elements. The line-up listed for the record includes Thomas Kretzschmer, Klaus Briest, Jim Wiley, Manne Rürup, Michael Kobs, Willi Pape, Olaf Casalich and Carsten Bohn, with instruments including guitar, bass, keyboards, saxophone, clarinet, flute, percussion and drums. Other musicians in the project also work with Uli Trepte’s Inbetween sessions, Carsten Bohn’s percussion project Voll Bedienung, and Achim Reichel’s AR sessions.

Other uses of the name

The name also appears on a German talent-show contestant, a Connecticut punk/emo-core band active between 2005 and 2007, a Norwegian one-off rap project that issues the single Ja Ræpp in 1994, and a Russian rapper who also uses the names Balplaya and Ekspo.