Most artists likely find their stage name on a whiteboard, in a group chat or after one too many late-night brainstorms. Jordy found his on a street sign. He was driving home late one night, down a road near his house, when the name hit him: Dove Road. A few days later, he opened his Bible to Matthew 3:16, the verse where the Spirit of God descends “like a dove,” and the coincidence started feeling more like intention.
“I read that verse, and it just locked in,” he says. “It felt like peace, like a fresh start. Like I finally knew who I was as an artist.”
Now going by dove rd, the Dallas-born R&B/pop singer released his first single, titled “Fantasy,” on Sept. 18. It’s a gorgeous, aching breakup song, but it’s also the sound of a guy who has taken just about every detour life offers and somehow ended up right back where he started: with music.
Hurst, Colleyville and a calm suburban soundtrack
His D-FW story starts in Dallas, where he was born. He was raised in Hurst before his family moved to Colleyville. “It was calm,” he says of growing up there — the kind of suburb where free time sorts itself into three neat piles: music, church or football.
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He did all three.
Calm, though, doesn’t mean quiet. Colleyville sits in a pocket of the area that has produced more musical talent than its manicured lawns would suggest. Post Malone went to Grapevine High, Colleyville’s rival school just down the street. And dove rd ran with the crew from Crown the Empire, the breakout post-hardcore band that also formed in Colleyville.
So, yes: a Pentecostal pastor’s kid, a future face-tattooed superstar and a metalcore band all grew up within a few miles of each other. Never let anyone say North Texas suburbs don’t contain multitudes.
Church was the first stage
Ask dove rd what shaped his creative makeup most, and he won’t hesitate. It was church.
His parents pastored a Pentecostal church, and anyone who has spent a Sunday in one knows it isn’t exactly a whisper-and-hymnal affair. There’s electricity. There’s call-and-response. There’s a choir that can make the building shake.
“Church is the greatest contributor to who I am creatively,” he says. “That’s where I learned what music could do to a room and to a person.”
The vocal lessons came from family. His aunts were church vocalists, and they’re the ones who taught him how to sing. Listen to the stacked vocals on “Fantasy,” and you can hear those Sunday mornings humming underneath.
The King of Pop rides shotgun
Then came the plot twist every great origin story needs.
When he was six years old, a member of his church started playing Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” during car rides to Home Depot. Picture it: a little kid in the passenger seat, somewhere between the lumber aisle and the church, hearing “Billie Jean” for the first time.
He was hooked. Not just on the music but on the whole Michael Jackson universe: the moves, the jackets, the glove, the drama of it all.
“I was obsessed,” he says. “I dressed up as him every Halloween. Michael Jackson wasn’t just music to me; he was the whole vision.”
By the age of seven, he’d recorded his first song. Choir and musical theater followed, then songwriting. Somewhere in there was a stint playing college football that ended with an injury, which is the kind of setback that tends to clarify things.
Down Under and back to music
The road eventually led to Australia, where dove rd went to study theology. For a while, music took a back seat. He’d put it down for a long time.
Then, in his final semester, he switched his focus to songwriting.
“I just knew I had to go back to music,” he says. “I couldn’t keep walking away from it.”
That pivot marked his return to the craft, and it didn’t come without some trial and error. Living in Sydney inspired his first moniker, “Since Syd.” He’ll be the first to tell you it was “cheesy,” and he never felt truly connected to it.
Add years of pastoral work and a tour with Washington rap-rock band Emblem3, and you’ve got a résumé that reads like five different lives. By the end of all that, he felt a little lost. Which brings us back to that fateful late-night drive, that street sign and that verse in Matthew.
For the first time, the name felt like him. dove rd gave him a real sense of artistic identity, peace, a fresh start and, in his word, “rebirth.”
The song that came true
That rebirth arrives wrapped in heartbreak.
“Fantasy” began during a relationship, but it wasn’t about anyone in particular. It was an imagined scenario, a meditation on how someone can grow so distant, or so vivid in memory, that they start to feel unreal. He left it unfinished.
Then the relationship ended. When he went back to the song, the lyrics had changed meaning on him. The hypothetical had become autobiographical.
“I wrote it during the relationship, not really thinking it was about us,” he says. “Then it ended, and I went back and heard it completely differently. The song had caught up with my life.”
The track opens on acoustic guitar before punchy drums, wild guitar textures and layered vocals push it somewhere bigger. It feels intimate one moment and wide open the next, like a diary entry that suddenly gets sung to a full room.
The song’s turning point is its title line: “I think it’s time that I let you go/‘Cause you’re just a fantasy.” It sounds like someone’s finally saying the truth out loud, even if they don’t fully believe it yet.
That tension spills into the bridge, where the pain and hope tangle together: “Hate how you make me believe/Hate how you making me bleed.” Anyone who has ever loved someone they knew they had to quit will feel that one in their chest. Sometimes the cruelest part isn’t the pain; it’s the belief that keeps you coming back for more.
Heartbreak, and what comes after
dove rd treats his songs like journal entries. He draws on love, heartbreak, family, faith, frustration and nostalgia so listeners can find pieces of themselves in the music. “Fantasy” is the first page of that new journal.
“‘Fantasy’ means a lot to me because it represents both heartbreak and rebirth,” he says. “It’s my first single as dove rd, so it marks a new beginning for me as an artist.”
It’s fitting. A song about letting go of an illusion arrives just as the artist has let go of a few of his own, including a stage name, a detour or two and the idea that music was something he could ever really set down.
From the pews to Home Depot car rides, from Colleyville to Australia and back, dove rd took the long way home. Turns out the scenic route was the whole idea.
“Fantasy” by dove rd is out now on all major streaming platforms.