Mxmtoon announces new debut album and sold out tour, oh my!
Photo Credit: Lauren Tepfer
Lately, social media app Tik Tok has brought so many new artists into the spotlight, one of them being Mia known as Mxmtoon. A soft spoken artist armed with a UKULELE in hand. With her new album masquerade coming out soon and a tour that is selling out left and right, we are curious as to hear her latest track High & Dry.
Tour Dates:
9/19 - Portland, OR @ Holocene SOLD OUT
9/20 - Vancouver, BC @ Rio
9/21 - Seattle, WA @ Crocodile SOLD OUT
9/27 - Los Angeles, CA @ Roxy SOLD OUT
9/28 - Los Angeles, CA @ Roxy
10/1 - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar
10/2 - San Diego, CA @ Voodoo Room @ House of Blues SOLD OUT
10/4 - Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room SOLD OUT
10/5 - Santa Ana, CA @ Constellation Room
10/12 - Washington, DC @ All Things Go Festival
10/19 - 10/20 - Las Vegas, NV @ Metarama Circus Gaming Festival
10/22 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
10/23 - Denver, CO @ Larimer Lounge
10/25 - Minneapolis, MN @ Amsterdam Hall
10/26 - Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
10/27- Detroit, MI @ Shelter
10/31 - San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall
11/6 - Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground
11/8 - Boston, MA @ The Sinclair SOLD OUT
11/9 - Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
11/11 - Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade SOLD OUT
11/15 - New York, NY @ Gramercy Theatre SOLD OUT
12/1 - Southampton, UK @ Engine Room*
12/2 - Birmingham, UK @ Academy 2* SOLD OUT
12/3 - Norwich, UK @ Epic*
12/5 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club* SOLD OUT
12/6 - Glasgow, UK @ The Garage* SOLD OUT
12/7 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Academy 2* SOLD OUT
12/8 - Dublin, Ireland @ Dublin Academy Green Room* SOLD OUT
12/10 - Bristol, UK @ The Fleece* SOLD OUT
12/12 - London, UK @ Electric Ballroom*
*Supporting Cavetown
bringing the masquerade to life, mxmtoon crafted most of her songs on her ukulele, adorning the album with occasional sonic flourishes—effervescent beats, gauzy guitar tones—created in collaboration with musician/producer Robin Skinner (aka Cavetown). First introduced to Cavetown’s music by her dad, Maia selected the 20-year-old Robin based on their mutual admiration and unique kinship as emerging artists. “I didn’t want to make my album with someone who’s been in the music industry a long time,” she says. “I wanted to work with someone close to my age, who exists in my world and can understand where I’m at right now in terms of this transitional period of being an artist.”
In the recording process, Maia and Robin purposely preserved the warm intimacy that’s always defined mxmtoon’s material, including her 2018 debut EP plum blossom. “Robin and I are both artists who mostly work out of our bedrooms, so even though we had this gigantic studio, we made almost the entire album sitting right next to each other in the control room,” she says. “Looking back, we probably could’ve just recorded in a closet.”
In each track on the masquerade, mxmtoon turns her detailed narrative of the most mundane moments into songs with deep meaning, a transformation propelled by her delicate melodies, disarming vocal presence, and utter aversion to self-seriousness.
All throughout the masquerade, mxmtoon matches her lack of artifice with the graceful musicality she first honed by studying violin and cello as a child. After writing her first song with two friends for a music class at age 13, she continued writing on her own but mostly kept her output to herself. In 2017, Maia began posting her music on SoundCloud, first only sharing her comedy songs but eventually uploading a heart-on-sleeve track called “feelings are fatal.” “At the time I was like, ‘Whatever—I have 200 followers, I’m just gonna post it,’” she recalls. “But then people really responded to it, which made me realize that I needed to keep my music as candid as possible, because that’s what people connect with.”
In her constant questioning and engaging with the world around her, mxmtoon has attained an undeniable solidarity with her listeners, ultimately providing some much-needed solace for the shy, the sensitive, the routinely underrepresented. “When I listen to the album, it feels like a musical of the things I’ve gone through and the life inside my head,” says Maia. “I hope people come away from it feeling like the songs belong to them too—like now there’s a piece of art in the world that speaks to their own experiences, even if they’d always felt like they were alone.”
