"Kiss A Stranger" is the newest from Miranda Joan as she get's ready to tour with The Killers
She confides on the meaning of the track, "It was almost a year into lockdown, I’d left New York, moved back to Vancouver, Canada, my career was indefinitely on pause, I was single and living in a studio above the garage at my mother’s house. After twelve years, I was back home, in the woods and isolated. The undercurrent of my existential crisis was also a breakup. And so, as I processed all the above, I spent every night alone in the studio above the garage and wrote songs. What I wanted was to reach out and touch somebody. Anybody. I yearned for connection; for physical touch, and found a deeper appreciation for the simple joy and freedom of meeting someone new, someone outside “the pod”; of connecting with a stranger."
Miranda Joan has found success sharing the stage with high profile artists including Andy Grammar, Lorde, Shawn Mendes and she is set to do a festival tour with The Killers. She has received acclaim from the likes of Consequence, NPR, BBC and LADYGUNN to name a few. "Kiss A Stranger" is off of her upcoming album Overstimulated set for release November 10th.
Miranda Joan is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, and musician. Born in Montréal, Miranda spent her formative years growing up on the north shore of Vancouver, filling diaries with emotions and experiences; creating a safe place to land for both her heart and her imagination that would go on to form the basis of her song writing. Her influences range from Bill Withers, Stevie Wonder, and Carole King to Anderson Paak., Little Dragon and Robyn, drawing on both the classic and the contemporary. Miranda’s personal experiences and the artistic and spiritual energies of the places she has called home flow through intricate song writing and playful production to form a unique blend of Soul-Pop.
With the fluidity of growing up along the Pacific Ocean in Vancouver and the joy-de-vivre and creativity that Montréal exudes radiating through her music, Miranda has always sustained strong roots in Canada. A shy child, her first experiences of music and performing came from high school drama and musical theatre. Leaning into Soul, R&B and Jazz sounds, she found a natural home for her voice. Miranda began to shape her sound using her lifetime of journals and influence from the singer-songwriters of all genres that had fed into her writing process throughout her life. She moved to New York to study Jazz and opened her inquisitive sound and creative style to a host of artists and producers in her musical surroundings, as well as the grittiness and intensity of the city.
Establishing herself in the Brooklyn Soul/Jazz community, Miranda is the co-host and co-founder of Brooklyn’s Femme Jam (NYC’s first all-female led jam session); a community initiative to create a womxn-led space with an emphasis on female musicians that fosters inclusivity. Arts mentorship has been an important through-line in Joan’s career and for the past eight years she has been a music mentor with the non-profit SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young where she works with youth 8-18 who stutter.
She has performed on national tours, played sold-out and headline shows at well-known New York venues, provided backing vocals for the likes of The Killers, Shawn Mendes, Lorde, Kylie Minogue and Andy Grammar, and joined Sly5thAve at Montréal Jazz Festival with the Orchestre National de Jazz de Montréal, in a tribute to Dr. Dre. In 2021 she was selected as one of First Up with RBCxMusic Emerging Artists as she released her debut album ‘Windborne’, the follow up to her 2019 EP “Still”. Both releases received consistent radio airplay in Vancouver and Los Angeles and led to a sync placement on Canadian TV show The Strays. Recent singles “Overstimulated” and “I Love You, Dwayne” have received support from NPR, Consequence, EARMILK, Exclaim! and airplay from CBC and MountainFM in Canada and Tony Minvielle (Jazz FM) in the UK.
Blossoming out of what was originally intended as a one song collaboration, Miranda has spent recent years collaborating with Ben Carr AKA CARRTOONS on her sophomore album ‘Overstimulated’. “It is an album book-ended by songs of affirmation, of rooting, of returning to and loving oneself, intertwined with the messy, chaotic and interconnected web of my hopes, dreams, imagination, love, and heartache”, Miranda muses. Simultaneously leaning into and letting go of the excessive and overstimulating, the LP sees Miranda shift into a space of contemporary Jazz and Soul, where the instrumental and acoustic meets the electronic. Developed song writing and storytelling sits alongside production from CARRTOONS and additional offerings from the likes of Sly5thAve, Jake Sherman, Ben Williams, The Huntertones and Kristine Kruta.
