Merve Daşdemir

Merve Daşdemir — Biography

Altın Gün, the band that took Anatolian rock and psychedelia to stages across Europe and North America, is where Turkish-Dutch musician Merve Daşdemir became best known, as its vocalist and keyboardist. She left the group in 2024 and since 2025 has been building her own body of work as MERVE. A graduate of Istanbul University in anthropology, she speaks four languages.

She began making music with a student band at university, but only entered professional music after moving to the Netherlands. In 2016 she answered an online ad from Jasper Verhulst, who wanted to form a band blending traditional Turkish rock with psychedelia, and joined Altın Gün. She recorded five studio albums with it; the second, Gece (2019), was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards. The band played Coachella among many other stages. Her last album with them, Aşk, came out in March 2023, and she also sang on the singles Vallahi Yok and Kırık Cam.

In February 2024 the band announced her departure, and she kept performing with them until May. In February 2025 she released her first solo single, Platonik, co-produced with Christopher McLaughlin, with a video directed by Tayfun Akbaş. She runs her own independent label, Alabanda Records, and is working on a Turkish-Hindi collaboration with Piya Malik of Say She She. After eleven years in the Netherlands she moved back to Turkey.