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See latest videos, charts and news<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\n\t\u201cThis record is super propulsive. We want you to be able to digest everything,\u201d says Josette Maskin, noting that the first break comes before the politically charged \u201cBig Stick.\u201d \u201cYou need a moment to take it in, like what has occurred and what is about to occur. We use any interlude to give the listener a break from the information.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe album is a departure from the delicate strumming of \u201cSilk Chiffon,\u201d the Phoebe Bridgers\u2019 collaboration that put the band on the mainstream map. The song \u2013 along with MUNA\u2019s triumphant self-titled third album that welded ballads, dance hits and a little bit of country together with unapologetically queer force \u2013 multiplied its fanbase and placed MUNA in front of massive audiences as an opening act for Kacey Musgraves, Lorde and Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n
\n\tInstead of attempting to recreate the intangible alchemy of \u201cSilk Chiffon,\u201d MUNA doubled down on the sound that launched the band, what Katie Gavin calls \u201cMUNA\u2019s actual DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThere is an element of all three of us, where we all have a part that\u2019s a little bit like the rebel artist spirit. There\u2019s an urge to defy understanding. There\u2019s an urge to be like, \u2018you don\u2019t know the whole story,\u2019\u201d Gavin tells Billboard<\/em>. \u201cThat led to this impulse of like, we need to go back to our roots instead of leaning into, \u2018Oh, you guys like \u201cSilk Chiffon?\u201d We\u2019ll make 10 \u201cSilk Chiffons.\u201d\u2018\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t\u201cThere is a reality in which, if you love \u2018Silk Chiffon\u2019 and you don\u2019t know any of our other music, you might not like our first album. And that\u2019s fine. There is a world in which that song could pull you into the other stuff in our catalog or it could be the only song of ours that you like, which is totally fine,\u201d says Naomi McPherson. \u201cWe\u2019re not complaining about having a popular song that people like, but we wanted to hone the band sound on this album.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom the first track, \u201cIt Gets So Hot,\u201d this album takes off and doesn\u2019t relent until the end. Was the consistent up-tempo intentional?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tJosette Maskin:<\/strong> We\u2019ve been a touring band for forever, since our inception. We feel like songs really have a use in how they feel in the body that could be some sort of physical release. So, it was definitely intentional. Push the BPM [beats per minute] and make things feel good. You get reinforced in the show. People respond differently to a faster BPM than they do a slow one. And it is where we are at and what we\u2019re interested in.<\/p>\n\n\tNaomi McPherson:<\/strong> It was also a reaction to a little bit to Katie having done a solo record of folky stuff. So for this one, we were like, \u201cokay, we\u2019re not gonna have a country ballad. We\u2019re gonna push further into the dance world,\u201d which we\u2019ve always straddled. We wanted to push it hard towards more up tempo dance inspired music.<\/p>\n\n\tHearing that you record with live in mind makes sense given the undeniable electricity of a MUNA show.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tKatie Gavin:<\/strong> We\u2019re so lucky with that because it\u2019s really not us. At a certain point, it\u2019s the fans. They are coming to shows, knowing every word of every song and really performing to us to the same extent we\u2019re performing to them. It creates such a special atmosphere. A band can be giving 110%, but if the crowd isn\u2019t going just as hard\u2026we can\u2019t create that feeling on our own.<\/p>\n\n\tThe first single \u201cDancing On the Wall\u201d really delivered on that signature MUNA sound of \u201880s electro pop with a handful of modern embellishments.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tMaskin<\/strong>:<\/strong> It felt like the most MUNA song that we\u2019ve ever actually made. More than it being any of our favorite songs, which I think it\u2019s Katie\u2019s favorite song, but it\u2019s the most MUNA thing we\u2019ve ever done. So, I guess that is the sound.<\/p>\n\n\tMcPherson<\/strong>:<\/strong> Emotional, yearning synth pop is where we shine.<\/p>\n\n\tHistorically, a lot of mainstream music for women and non-binary queer people has been more on the folk, singer-songwriter, softer side. Where do you find inspiration in queer musical ancestry?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tGavin:<\/strong> I\u2019ve never really thought about it in that way but it\u2019s helpful in terms of conceptualizing the way in which we as a band straddle a few sounds and cultures. There\u2019s always a bit of tension there because we have the heart and spirit of Tegan and Sara and the Indigo Girls, but we have the BPM and the energy of\u2026one of my queer ancestors is that \u201880s band Erasure. It was a Queenie guy and he made pop sounding music but it is sad. We\u2019re Trojan Horsing the sad lesbian music into the gay club.<\/p>\n\n\tIt doesn\u2019t feel totally natural to us to make music that is singularly fun and joyful. Or if we are, it is in the same way that anybody who lives in struggle needs to make something that\u2019s fun and joyful. It\u2019s out of necessity. There\u2019s always going to be layers to it.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe aesthetics for this album have been warehouses with red lights and a bit of Flashdance<\/em>. What was the inspiration for these looks, especially for the music videos?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tMcPherson<\/strong><\/strong>: <\/strong>We went into this cycle specifically with the hope of being able to create a world for these songs to live in that felt and feels cohesive and like an extension of the music. We were really attracted to the idea of creating this slightly surreal, heightened, somewhat abstract version of the warehouse club city thing. Shooting the videos in 16mm feels a bit like an extension of what we were attempting to do with the music, which was create this gritty but beautiful universe that had some texture to it. Red came to mind pretty early on and it ended up taking shape across the record in different ways as a very emotional color.<\/p>\n\n\tGavin:<\/strong> We like to portray queer power in some sort of way. And I like that when we sent this album to our drummer, Sarab [Singh], he texted us being like, \u201cEvery song feels like a f\u2013ing punch to the gut.\u201d It\u2019s quite a robust record. We wanted to create a powerful and strong image.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.billboard.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From the start of Dancing On the Wall (out today via Saddest Factory Records), the LA-based band\u2019s fourth studio album drops listeners into a sweaty warehouse of queer power pop filed with heartbreak and lust. And it only accelerates from there, hardly letting up until the closer \u201cBuzzkiller\u201d \u2014 save for two interludes that serve […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2408100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[309165,35157],"class_list":["post-2408099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-genre-pop","tag-pride"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/MUNA-Talk-New-Album-Dancing-On-The-Wall-Interview.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2408099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2408101,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2408099\/revisions\/2408101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2408100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2408099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2408099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2408099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}