KING PRINCESS Shares Video for "Jaime" + Kicks Off North American Tour This Weekend
GIRL VIOLENCE OUT NOW
King Princess – the project of Brooklyn-based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and actor Mikaela Straus – released her triumphant third record Girl Violence earlier this month. She’s about to embark on a North American tour starting at Austin City Limits this weekend, but beforehand she shares a music video for “Jaime.” Co-starring Straus and Gio of Giovanni’s Kitchen, the music video was directed by Celine Sutter and finds King Princess revisiting her Cheap Queen era of femininity, just to burn it down with “Jaime.” Sutter says: “For her album Girl Violence, King Princess has spent the rollout tormented by demonically seductive, maniacal women. In the ‘Jaime’ music video, she finally embodies that feminine figure; this time directing the violence inward, upon herself – or perhaps upon a Bushwick line cook lookalike. Reviving the genderqueer essence of Cheap Queen, this new KP screams, seduces, and hotboxes her boyfriend’s car. At its core, this song plays with the allure of self-destruction: chasing approval that will never come, with King Princess steping into the role of the villain – and she has never looked better doing it.”
King Princess says of the video, "People on the internet kept saying that Gio looked like me so I decided to cast him in a video so I could torment myself. I can't stop and I can't walk away, I love it and I hate it. Sometimes when it comes to girl violence, I am the woman torturing me.”
Girl Violence, out now on section1, was announced earlier this Summer with a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and King Princess recently sat down with The New Yorker to discuss the new record. Made in collaboration with Jake Portrait (Lil Yachty, Alex G, Unknown Mortal Orchestra), and Aire Atlantica (breakthrough: SZA’s “Low”), Girl Violence is the sound of Straus picking up the pieces after her world fell apart – fighting for freedom, stepping back from the limelight and major label system, breaking up, moving away, and returning to Brooklyn where she was born and raised. Through it all, she somehow found the agency and creative spirit to fight the misconceptions and create the album she was destined to make, in a potent return to self. Perennially underestimated, she now wields the chip on her shoulder as a weapon, upping the ante and taking the reins on Girl Violence.
King Princess will take Girl Violence on the road for a proper tour, starting this weekend. Kicking off at Austin City Limits, she will tour throughout North America including shows in her hometown of NYC at Brooklyn Paramount and capping off the US run with The Wiltern in Los Angeles. She’ll then tour throughout the UK and Europe in December. Full dates listed below and tickets are on sale HERE.
The release of Girl Violence comes in the midst of Mikaela Straus’ television debut, as she stars in the new season of Nine Perfect Strangers on Hulu, alongside Nicole Kidman. Later this year, she will make her feature film debut in Song Sung Blue, an upcoming movie starring Hugh Jackman & Kate Hudson. There is truly no one like her – with over one billion streams across platforms, a string of global certifications, collaborations with the likes of Fiona Apple, Florence Welch, Aaron Dessner, Mark Ronson, and Father John Misty, performances on Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and NPR Tiny Desk, tours with The Strokes, Florence + The Machine, and Kacey Musgraves, fashion campaigns for Gucci and Calvin Klein, and a constant champion of LGBTQ+ visibility…King Princess is a singular artist that is ready for her big return.
BUY & LISTEN TO GIRL VIOLENCE NOW
Tour Dates
October 3 - Austin City Limits - Austin, TX
October 10 - Austin City Limits - Austin, TX
October 25 - Marathon Music Works - Nashville, TN
October 26 - Buckhead Theatre - Atlanta, GA
October 28 - The National - Richmond, VA
October 29 - Brooklyn Paramount - Brooklyn, NY
October 31 - 9:30 Club (late show) - Washington, DC
November 1 - Union Transfer - Philadelphia, PA
November 2 - House of Blues - Boston, MA
November 4 - HISTORY - Toronto, CAN
November 5 - Royal Oak Music Theatre - Royal Oak, MI
November 7 - The Salt Shed - Chicago, IL
November 8 - Uptown Theater - Minneapolis, MN
November 10 - The Pageant - St. Louis, MO
November 11 - The Truman - Kansas City, MO
November 13 - Ogden Theatre - Denver, CO
November 14 - The Depot - Salt Lake City, UT
November 16 - Showbox SoDo - Seattle, WA
November 17 - Roseland Theater - Portland, OR
November 19 - The Regency Ballroom - San Francisco, CA
November 21 - House of Blues - Anaheim, CA
November 22 - The Wiltern - Los Angeles, CA
December 3 - Vicar Street - Dublin, Ireland
December 5 - Queen Margaret Union - Glasgow, Scotland
December 6 - Beckett - Leeds, UK
December 7 - New Century Hall - Manchester, UK
December 9 - Brixton Electric - London, UK
December 13 - La Madeleine - Brussels, BE
December 14 - Le Trianon - Paris, FR
December 16 - Melkweg Max - Amsterdam, Netherlands
December 17 - Astra Kulturhaus - Berlin, Germany
Download high-res album art HERE
Tracklist
1. Girl Violence
2. Jaime
3. Origin
4. I Feel Pretty
5. Cry Cry Cry
6. Get Your Heart Broken
7. Girls
8. Covers
9. Say What You Will
10. RIP KP
11. Alone Again
12. Slow Down and Shut Up
13. Serena
More on King Princess & Girl Violence:
Sometimes no matter how hard you try, your life can still fall apart. Girl Violence, the third album from King Princess, is the sound of Mikaela Straus picking up the pieces of a world left shattered.
“Girl violence is very sneaky,” Straus says. “It's not physical, it’s deeply emotional, spiritual, and spooky. Women are both amazing and sinister—including myself—and it's my curiosity to understand all the love, loss, and changes that come out of my love for women. Why are we so inclined to cause and receive chaos? If you've experienced even an iota of it, then you'll have a story to tell. And these are mine.”
The songs on Girl Violence are probing and vulnerable, but also nuanced, sensual, and bold; a product of her physical homecoming — leaving LA after seven years for Brooklyn where she was born + raised. “I was not loving life, I didn't feel grounded at all. I realized my feet were dangling for years,” she says of her end-stage time in LA. “Once I was back in the arms of the city I love, I started to feel easier and lighter about hard decisions that were actually in my best interest.”
Accordingly, the album brims with an exhilarating sense of freedom, stemming from Straus’ decision to leave behind the major label system that had defined much of her story up to this point. While not strictly a “breakup record” in the traditional sense, Girl Violence was in part born out of a newly-found romantic freedom following the end of a long relationship. Finally feeling at home and left to her own devices, she was able to tap into the force that fueled some of her earliest creative excitement and breakthroughs.
She zeroed in on it: one studio, a tight-knit NYC crew, and a few months of immersion. She found kindred-spirit collaborators in Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait (credits include Lil Yachty, Alex G), and Aire Atlantica (breakthrough: SZA’s “Low”) and inspiration in tracks by IDLES, Massive Attack’s Mezzanine (her bedrock reference for production/mixing/vibe), and Beatles live sessions. Girl Violence slowly started to take shape.
This collection may be “a celebration of the craziness of femininity, in awe and admiration of the derangement,” but it also stands as a document of Straus’ multifaceted evolution. She’ll always be in motion with her quicksilver humor and curious, open heart.
“It's about recognizing that we have an abundance of love in our life,” she says. “I don't think I will ever lose the ability to stop loving or creating big loves. You can have crazy fallouts and breakups, but you aren't incapable of loving, if anything, I think it makes you more capable.”
Although Girl Violence centralizes relationship dynamics in all their cerebral, emotional, and carnal glory, above all else she interrogates the shifting sands of self. How you view yourself and move through the world, what you understand and acknowledge, and the logic you still decide to abandon—for desire, for adventure, for the ride. Through it all, she offers up Girl Violence not as an answer, but as an echo—one that’s yours to claim, distort, and make your own.
Photo Credit: Conor Cunninghan
