If you have not heard of Donna Dafi yet, “Touch Me Like That” is going to change that. The track gets stuck in your head not because it tricks you into it, but because it genuinely earns a spot there. It is confident, fun and produced well enough that you notice it at first listen.
Donna Dafi grew up in Stuttgart with a Nigerian-German mother and a Kosovo-Albanian father, which means music was never going to be a simple thing in her household, and it shows. She has a cross-cultural fluency that comes through in her sound, even on a track as straightforward as this one. What is less obvious from the music, but worth knowing, is that she also holds a master’s degree in architecture. She was doing that during the day while spending nights in the studio and attending acting school on weekends. So when she talks about structure and intention in her songwriting, she actually means it.
She also runs her own record label, Record 17, with her brother Rinor, who has been making music with her even before they hit teenage years. The name comes from the birthday they share, May 17th, two years apart. There is a family operation at the center of everything she does, which is a detail that matters when you are trying to understand why her output is so cohesive.
“Touch Me Like That” is a pop track about attraction, the very specific, slightly reckless energy of a connection that catches you off guard. Producers Merlin and Dominik Haller have built something that sits between early 2000s pop and what is working on streaming platforms right now. The groove is tight, and the hook is immediate. At two minutes and twenty-three seconds, it is almost refreshingly short. Songwriters Nina Caroline, Haley Maze and Donna Dafi clearly knew what they wanted the song to do, and they let it do exactly that without piling on.
The vocal performance is grounded. The playfulness in the chorus and the slight edge in the verses all read as someone who knows this song well enough to trust it. “This song is about owning your sensuality and feeling powerful in your body,” she has said. “It’s about connection, chemistry, and the freedom to express your desires without shame. I wanted to create something that makes women feel confident, sexy, and unstoppable.” And that intention carries.
Her back catalogue has been quietly building momentum. Earlier singles have racked up serious streaming numbers, one crossed well into the hundreds of thousands on Spotify alone. And her recent video for “Primadonna” has already passed six figures on YouTube. She is also the face of ESCADA Fragrances, which speaks to a profile that extends well beyond music. None of it happened overnight. She recorded her first song at nine years old, a track made with celebrated Albanian singer Sabri Fejzullahu whose proceeds went to orphanages. That is a long runway before “Touch Me Like That.”
It is a well-made pop track about desire and confidence, written and performed by someone who has clearly put in the time to figure out her voice. Whether or not it crosses over to wider audiences will depend on factors outside anyone’s control. But as a piece of work, it definitely holds up.
