MUNA is an American indie pop band consisting of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson.
So let’s find out some trivia and facts about the band.
- Muna is an American indie pop band
- The name is stylized as MUNA
- The band consists of Katie Gavin, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson
- They released two studio albums with RCA Records
- These albums were About U (2017) and Saves the World (2019)
- Then they signed with independent label Saddest Factory Records
- They released their third studio album, Muna, in June 2022
- Muna is based in Los Angeles
- The trio met in college at the University of Southern California
- They began working together in 2013
- With Maskin and McPherson playing together on guitars and Gavin adding synth bass and vocals
- Gavin had introduced McPherson to Maskin
- Gavin and Maskin were music majors
- While McPherson double-majored in narrative studies and American studies & ethnicity
- The two guitarists, Maskin and McPherson, had been used to playing ska and progressive rock
- They settled on a different sound when their initial collaboration with singer Gavin resulted in a pop song
- Beginning their collaboration in an experimental mode, they evolved towards hooky electronic pop
- In the summer of 2014, they self-released their debut EP, More Perfect, on Bandcamp and SoundCloud
- Its success led to their signing by RCA Records in the US and Columbia Records in the UK
- Gavin and McPherson dated for three years and broke up shortly after being signed
- RCA released their self-produced debut major label EP, Loudspeaker, in May 2016
- Their debut full-length album, About U, was released on February 3, 2017
- Dutch DJ/producer Tiësto remixed “Winterbreak” in May 2016
- Muna played Lollapalooza 2016 in Chicago in July 2016
- They toured America with Grouplove in the fall of 2016
- The band made their late-night network television debut on November 7, 2016, on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
- In June 2017, it was announced that the band would be the opening act on the North American and European tour dates for Harry Styles
- In 2017, their song “I Know a Place” was featured in The Carmilla Movie, following the original web series based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella of the same name
- In 2018, Muna was featured playing “I Know a Place” live in the Netflix movie Alex Strangelove, which chronicles the sexual awakening of teen protagonist Alex Truelove
- In 2018, the band began work on their second full-length record
- In June 2019, the band announced their second album, Saves the World, which was released on September 6, 2019
- The album was preceded by its lead single, “Number One Fan,” followed by the singles “Who,” “Stayaway,” and “Taken”
- Following their London shows at the Village Underground, it was announced that Muna would be returning to the UK for their Saves the World Tour in December 2019
- In 2020, shortly after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Muna were dropped by RCA for “not making enough money”
- It was then announced in May 2021, that Muna had signed with Phoebe Bridgers’ record label Saddest Factory, which operates in partnership with Secretly Group’s Dead Oceans
- In September 2021, Muna released their single “Silk Chiffon” featuring Bridgers, their first since signing to the label
- Rolling Stone called it a “buoyant track with an uncharacteristically bright declaration of queer love”
- The song was chosen by a number of publications for their year-end lists of 2021, including Rolling Stone, Consequence of Sound, and Line of Best Fit
- These publication ranked it at number one
- Muna later joined Kacey Musgraves’s 15-city winter tour between January and February 2022
- In March 2022, the band released the single “Anything But Me” and announced that their third studio album, self-titled Muna would be released on June 24, 2022, through Saddest Factory and Dead Oceans
- The following month, they performed the single on Ellen DeGeneres’ final season of her daytime talk show
- The album’s third single “Kind of Girl” was released in April 2022, alongside a Western-inspired video with the trio playing “with the gendered nature of the song”
- The band performed the song on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon the following month
- Following their self-titled third album’s release, Muna was acclaimed by music critics who have scored it as the band’s highest-rated album according to media aggregate site Metacritic
- It became the band’s first charting album on multiple charts including the UK Albums Chart, US Billboard 200 and in Australia and Scotland
- The same day of release, Muna released the fourth single from the album “What I Want” with its music video
- The trio also released their cover of Britney Spears’ “Sometimes” (1999) for the Hulu LGBTQ American romantic comedy film Fire Island in June 2022
- Muna are currently an opening act on selected March through July 2023 US dates of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour
- They are also the opening act for the Australian leg of Lorde’s Solar Power Tour
- In March 2023, Muna performed to a sold-out crowd of 15,000 people at the closing ceremony of WorldPride Sydney, alongside Ava Max and Kim Petras
- In April 2023, the band performed their first set at Coachella
- Shortly after, Muna released a new single “One That Got Away” alongside a “criminal underworld” inspired music video
- All three members identify as queer
- McPherson is non-binary
- Initially wary of being pigeonholed as a “queer band”
- Muna later came to embrace the opportunity to use their musical fame to help inspire younger people to be comfortable with their identities
- Their songs frequently address issues of sexuality and gender
- They describe one early song, “So Special”
- They also called it “an anthem for the slut-shamed girls of the world who have to assert their own value”
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