{"id":65406,"date":"2026-05-27T13:38:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/27\/muna-talk-new-album-tour-and-politics-in-new-interview\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T13:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T13:38:29","slug":"muna-talk-new-album-tour-and-politics-in-new-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/27\/muna-talk-new-album-tour-and-politics-in-new-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Muna Talk New Album, Tour, and Politics in New Interview"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tMuna<\/a> is ready to bring the heat on tour \u2014 even if pyrotechnics are out of the question. \u201cOur lighting guy is trying to sell us on pyro,\u201d guitarist Naomi McPherson says. \u201cHe pulled me aside during rehearsal, so I was like, \u2018We don\u2019t have a fire budget. We can\u2019t afford fire.’\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tEven so, the band is aiming to showcase their new album, Dancing on the Wall<\/em>, with unforgettable concerts for their upcoming Gets So Hot tour. \u201cThe shows in the fall are going to be the best shows you could ever see in your whole damn life,\u201d guitarist Josette Maskin says, adding, \u201cIf you do not come to these shows, you are actually missing maybe some of the most important events that could ever happen in your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMcPherson, Maskin, and lead singer Katie Gavin<\/a> sat down at the Rolling Stone Studio in New York and shared the plans behind their upcoming live shows, how their time on the Eras Tour influenced some of their setlist goals, and how the past four years shaped their latest release.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been about a week that Dancing on the Wall<\/em><\/strong> has been out. What has the response from fans been like so far?<\/strong>
Gavin:<\/strong> This week has been really special because we have been playing shows the whole week. We did two shows in LA. The first one was on album release day and then the last two nights we\u2019ve played in New York. We\u2019re doing a run of shows at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The New Yorkers had one week and they\u2019ve already learned every word.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s been the most surprising thing to come out of those shows?<\/strong>
Maskin: <\/strong>How fast [fans] can learn. They really care to be singing with us. The people who were there are such diehard Muna fans that it does just feel like a return to coming home and seeing everybody.
Gavin:<\/strong> I\u2019m surprised we haven\u2019t smacked each other with our instruments \u2026 We did maybe 10 days of rehearsal, but to go in off the bat and play an album top to bottom, we were like, \u201cAre we going to be feeling really rusty?\u201d It was surprising how it felt like such a homecoming. We were just relieved. We were like, \u201cOh yeah, this is what we fucking love to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tSpeaking of live shows\u2026 the Gets So Hot Tour kicks off this fall. It is one of the first tours that the band is embarking on since opening on the Eras Tour<\/a>. What\u2019s the biggest lesson from that experience that you guys hope to bring to the headlining Muna tour?<\/strong>
McPherson: <\/strong> We experienced that period of time as such a hysterical anomaly and glitch in the timeline of our lives. Us being on that stage, we were like, \u201cthis is nuts\u201d because the scale of the shows is so massive. [But] if I had to say something, we\u2019re going to try to incorporate as much of our music that people love as possible. We won\u2019t be doing a marathon three-hour long [show]. We don\u2019t have it in us.
Gavin:<\/strong> There is something really interesting about how that was such a huge production and yet she makes an effort to give people each night something special and intimate. We can sometimes struggle with that because we\u2019re all such perfectionists in terms of arrangements of songs. Taylor, I really respect the way that she\u2019ll just, and it speaks also to her comfortability with her instruments, if she knows that people want to hear a certain song, she\u2019ll pull it out and just give the people what they want. We want to try and do that more.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the tour, the band is headlining All Things Go<\/a>.<\/strong> What about that festival are you most excited for?<\/strong>
McPherson: <\/strong>We love All Things Go. We started calling All Things Go \u201cLesbo Palooza\u201d because of the style of artists \u2026 I found it in an old article that was about shitty things people said about Lilith Fair, and I was like, \u201cWe need to make a festival called Lesbo Palooza because that\u2019s awesome.\u201d
Maskin:<\/strong> People better be ready. We came to F-U-C-K onstage.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s been four years since your last release<\/a>. What happened in that time and how did it shape the record?<\/strong>
McPherson:<\/strong> Katie released a solo album<\/a>. Us being the cheerleaders of Katie putting out her solo album helped pull into focus what the Muna sound really is at its core. From the beginning of the band, we\u2019ve always been about making very emotional melodramatic synth-pop with a lot of energy and charge. We went back to listening to a lot of the stuff that was inspiring us when we first started out as a band. So a lot of New Wave. There\u2019s a parallel to that era of music and the politics that surrounded it and what we\u2019re experiencing now with regards to a very powerful right-wing resurgence. The idea of making a very high energy dance album is a sort of antidote to all of that.
Gavin: <\/strong>Our roles were all a little bit more loosely defined in some ways because we were all learning new skills. \u201cWhy Do I Get a Good Feeling\u201d was me experimenting with a string part that Naomi had made and making my own drum and bass track over it and writing over that.<\/p>\n

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\n\tIn terms of our life, we all turned 30 since the last time we put an album out. There\u2019s a sense [that] we\u2019ve all grown up a lot since we\u2019ve been in the band so it\u2019s like learning how to take care of yourself in different ways. I went on psychiatric medication, so this is my first album that I\u2019ve written on Prozac. Some people are clocking that, like \u201cit\u2019s just not as deeply sad as I\u2019m used to with Muna.\u201d And I was like, \u201cthat might just be the meds.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you guys find that being on the road and performing inspires you to start writing music or is that separate?<\/strong>
Maskin:<\/strong> This record, in the sense of its BPMs, is 100 percent influenced by the level of touring that we did two years ago. We want the shows to feel a certain way. We want there to be a certain level of catharsis. We want Muna shows to be a place where you work it out. You work out whatever you\u2019re feeling and fast music gets you going.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas there any fear about living up to the success of \u201cSilk Chiffon\u201d<\/a> and your last record overall? <\/strong>
McPherson:<\/strong> You can\u2019t help but react against what you\u2019ve previously worked on, whether you\u2019ve had success or not. With \u201cSilk,\u201d there of course is fear. This has been happening to us since the beginning of our career. We\u2019re always like, \u201cWhat if this is the best moment of our lives and then everything else after this sucks?\u201d Since we toured with Harry Styles<\/a>, we were like, \u201cWhat if this is the peak?\u201d You never know. We have to accept that, but what we are in control of is making music that we think is good. It would have been a very fear-based scarcity mentality thing to do to try to recreate \u201cSilk Chiffon\u201d another 11 times and see which one sticks.
Gavin:<\/strong> It\u2019s funny, though, I went and saw the Indigo Girls in concert before we came to New York and Emily [Saliers] from the Indigo Girls<\/a> was like, \u201cWhy did you write those lyrics in \u2018Buzzkiller\u2019<\/a> where you say \u2018the band\u2019s doing well, but I\u2019m past my prime and everyone knows it?’\u201d In some ways, that lyric is kind of about \u201cSilk Chiffon\u201d because I was contending with like, \u201cOkay, well that was a peak. There\u2019s no way that you get so lucky to even have that happen once. There\u2019s no way that I\u2019ll be able to achieve that again.\u201d [Saliers] was like, \u201cWhat the hell?\u201d She\u2019s in her sixties and I\u2019m 33 and so that was humbling in terms of being like, \u201cI really have a brain worm if I think that I\u2019m too old to be doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou guys have said that compared to the last album, which was about queer joy, this is more about queer rage. Why was it important to highlight that?<\/strong>
McPherson: <\/strong>Of course, the music still sounds quite joyful and celebratory and ecstatic. We can\u2019t avoid that, that\u2019s just who we are and what we like to make. But I think we in the past four years \u2026 since the beginning of the genocide in Gaza and then Trump\u2019s election and the ICE raids and cracking down on trans people\u2019s rights to exist and bodily autonomy for women, just all types of horrible stuff has been happening and it would be really weird to make another song that\u2019s like, \u201cFuck yeah, it\u2019s time to have a good summer. Everybody get up and clap y\u2019all hands.\u201d The joy has been a little harder to come by the past couple of years. It wasn\u2019t even possible to do too much of an extreme emphasis on the proliferation of joy.
Maskin:<\/strong> Those two things \u2026 They both coexist and feed on each other. If we were to just give you a capitalism pill and try to feed you an advertisement, it doesn\u2019t take away your rage. The rage needs to be felt and needs to be expressed because we\u2019re all feeling this. What is going on globally is something that we want our fans to know.
Gavin:<\/strong> We had to, in a way, express the queer rage so that we can keep the flame alive of the sacred thing that queer joy means to us.
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