Donna Missal announces ‘in the mirror, in the night’ EP with “insecure” co-produced by Sega Bodega + Mura Masa

January 15 2022
Photo by Erica Hernández
PRAISE FOR DONNA MISSAL

“Donna Missal might change your life.”
Paper Mag

“a glitching, alt-pop confessional, in which the rising singer distorts her voice, drops in some dance beats, and makes a beeline for a moody dancefloor, as she extolls the virtuous qualities of her partner [Sega Bodega].”
Billboard

“How deep can you actually go? It’s all that’s on Donna Missal’s mind in this aerodynamic stream of post-coital consciousness, produced by Sega Bodega.”
Fader

“genuinely full-body-chills brilliant”
i-D

“her voice is a powerhouse – it’s reminiscent of all of the greats in a more innocent era of music”
Ladygunn

“gritty but delicate”
SPIN

Donna Missal today announces her mesmerizing new EP, in the mirror, in the night, with the unsettling, off kilter “insecure” co-produced by Sega Bodega and Mura Masa. Listen to Missal sing about cutting ties with a toxic personality HERE and preorder the entire EP out Feb 11th, 2022 via Harvest Records [Capitol] HERE. 

“What does intimacy really mean?” asks Donna Missal. With, in the mirror, in the night, the breakout indie pop star is determined to find out. Written a capella in her bedroom, the collection finds Missal stripping away nearly everything she’s come to be known for—the acrobatic vocals, the blockbuster choruses, the anthemic performances—and instead distilling her work down to its most vital, vulnerable form.

The songs here, including “insecure,” and previously released singles “(to me) your face is love,” and “sex is good (but have you tried),” rely on subtlety and insinuation, exploring identity and transformation with keen insight and raw honesty, and the performances are delicate and nuanced to match, with Missal’s hushed vocals wrapped in lush, shape-shifting electronic arrangements from Irish producer Sega Bodega. The result is a vocoder and synth-fueled sound more reminiscent of Bjork or Imogen Heap than anything Missal’s built her reputation on thus far, an immersive, experimental collection of avant-garde pop that balances sonic liberation and personal revelation in equal measure.

Of “insecure”, Missal shares, “It’s about fakeness and not wanting to be around it. I wrote the lyric and melody to a click track when I was living in New York City over the winter. I was alone in the studio apartment I was renting, under the covers of a bed in the middle of the room. I set a tempo on my computer, tried a time-signature that would stimulate melodic ideas that felt very new and challenging to me, without any music to guide me I felt very free and very alone at once.  I was writing about separation, solitude, and emptiness a lot during this time.”
 
Born and raised in New Jersey, Missal grew up in a tight-knit family and developed a passion for music at an early age. By high school, she was already working professionally as a singer, and in her early twenties, she took the internet by storm with her first single, “Keep Lying,” which went viral after Zane Lowe premiered a demo of it on Beats 1. In the years to come, Missal would go on to two release two critically acclaimed full-length albums, rack up tens of millions of streams across platforms, land festival slots everywhere from Bonnaroo to Bumbershoot, collaborate with Macklemore, earn praise from Shania Twain, make her late night TV debut on Seth Meyers, and tour with the likes of Lewis Capaldi, Chvrches, and King Princess, among others. Critics, too, were quick to take note of Missal’s rising star, with Billboard hailing her “drop kick of a vocal” and Rolling Stone declaring her “stunning.”

“insecure” by Donna Missal is out now via Harvest Records, buy/stream it here.

in the mirror, in the night EP by Donna Missal is out February 11th, 2022, pre-order/pre-save it here.

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