Mannequin Pussy, Soul Glo

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Millicent Hailes

A close-up of the band Mannequin Pussy.

Mannequin Pussy

$22.50.

media release: On Nov. 14, Mannequin Pussy announced a 2024 North America tour in support of their recently announced upcoming album, I Got Heaven, and released a visualizer for their blistering new single “Sometimes.”

“‘Sometimes’ is the internal conversation and subsequent battle that comes with facing your own desires. It is a song about the struggle of feeling a deep need for one’s independence while at the same time accepting that you are longing for someone who would understand you and be enough to draw you away from your solitude. It is the anger you feel at someone for making you feel desire. For allowing that desire to distract you from your work and your self and your mission,” explains Marisa Dabice.

I Got Heaven, due March 1st on Epitaph Records, is the band’s most fully realized LP yet. Over 10 ambitious tracks that abruptly turn from searing punk to inviting pop, the album is deeply concerned with desire, the power in being alone, and how to live in an unfeeling and unkind world. “There's just so much constantly going on that feels intentionally evil that trying to make something beautiful feels like a radical act ,” says Dabice. “The ethos of this band has always been to bring people together.”

I Got Heaven, an album filled with cathartic tunes about despairing times, is a document of a band doubling down on their unshakable bond to make something furious, thrilling, and wholly alive. 

Mannequin Pussy is Colins “Bear” Regisford, Kaleen Reading, Maxine Steen and Marisa Dabice.

Following the 2019 release of their critically acclaimed third album Patience, Mannequin Pussy returned in 2021 for their EP Perfect. They toured that release relentlessly and added guitarist Maxine Steen to the band’s official lineup. Where the band members’ personal lives were in transition with breakups, changing living situations, and periods of self-reevaluation, their time together on the road was a grounding and clarifying force. “There was so much going on in our lives that it was the perfect opportunity to recalibrate who we were as people and musicians,” says Regisford. The band changed their entire formula, choosing to write together in Los Angeles with producer John Congleton over slowly crafting tracks at home. “When I've written songs, it's usually a very solitary process,” says Dabice. “So this was shedding a lot of those hermit-like qualities to do something intensively collaborative. Your best work comes when you allow other people into it.” 

By December 2022, the band had 17 new songs written with Congleton in Los Angeles. “Everyone felt empowered to speak up about their own ideas to make this thing the best it could possibly be,” says Regisford. New member Maxine Steen, who has made music with Dabice for years including their side project Rosie Thorne, was especially essential to the writing sessions.