Pittsburgh local music spotlight: Daniel Attali

Mike Palm TribLive Mon, Apr 13, 2026 • 07:01 AM

Daniel Attali (Submitted)

Singer-songwriter Daniel Attali, a Pittsburgh native, just released his album, “7 Hours,” which has been described as a coming-of-age journey.

”This album is the story of my life starting toward the end of my senior year of high school until I broke up with my partner during the first month of college, a two-year journey,” he said. “Trying and failing to make a long-distance relationship work for an entire year provided more than enough emotional turmoil for me to write ‘7 Hours’ and keep a lyrical through-line with each song talking directly or indirectly about my ex.

“Even though it’s about a past relationship, the album is really about myself, grappling with how my partner affected my life, my other relationships, my sense of who I was, and how much I valued my friendships. Musically, ‘7 Hours’ was an experiment. I was always testing the limits of what I could do. Throughout the making of this album, I would often find songs that boggled my mind, and I would say to myself: ‘I have to try and recreate this.’ Nothing made me happier than crossing another thing off of my ‘music producer bucket list.’”

The album’s title comes from the seven-hour time difference between he and his partner.

“(It) became such an integral part of living life during the year we were long-distance,” he said. “I chose it before writing the final song of the album and as I was writing that last song, the breakup song, I wanted to insert the album title into it and tie the whole album together.”

Attali said he took inspiration from pop, singer-songwriter, folk, funk, art pop and even musical theater on the album.

“As a passionate producer and mix engineer, I love to take a lot of influence from different areas,” he said.

The making of the album will always stick with him.

“My favorite moments by far during the making of ‘7 Hours’ were days where I was recording with my friends, especially band recording days in the making of the outro of ‘Crazy (aah)’ and ‘7 Hours,’” he said. “I always had someone help me record those sessions because I had to be in the room with the musicians to play with them. It’s hard to describe the high that band recording gave me, but it was a truly magical experience every time. In the same vein, recording the group vocals for the outro of the album was such a beautiful experience because I brought together all the people that got me through college thus far.”

Attali filled in TribLive on what else we should know about his music:

Musician: Daniel Attali

Band members: Daniel Attali (solo artist/producer)

Founding story: I started playing music when I was pretty young, around 8-9, although I apparently enjoyed singing before that. My first instrument was beatboxing and singing followed closely after. I don’t remember there being any particular reason that I did it besides feeling the need to do it everyday, all the time, constantly making noise wherever I went. I will say that my first inspirations were beatboxers — constantly watching their performances on stages until I spent one weekend at the Beatbox American Championships in Brooklyn as a spectator. It is still one of my favorite life experiences. They were my idols growing up, causing me to learn new techniques and get a looper to make covers/looper routines just like they did. I fell in love with a cappella, singing, and musical theater music from my first vocal coach, and I learned piano and music theory so that I could figure out harmonies. When covid came I had all the tools to go all out with music. I wrote, produced, and released my first original song with a free distributor in March of 2020.

For fans of: Lizzy McAlpine, Bo Burnham

Influences: Lizzy McAlpine, Jon Bellion, Flyte, DOMi & JD Beck, Vulfpeck, Olivia Barton, Bon Iver, Jacob Collier, Bo Burnham