KING PRINCESS Announces New Album & Debuts First Single on Colbert - “RIP KP” Out Now!
KING PRINCESS
RETURNS WITH TRIUMPHANT NEW ALBUM GIRL VIOLENCE,
SHARES NEW SONG/VIDEO BY WARREN FU FOR “RIP KP”
& ANNOUNCES NORTH AMERICAN, UK/EU TOUR DATES
Girl Violence out Sept 12 on section1
Starring in current season of Nine Perfect Strangers
alongside Nicole Kidman, Christine Baranski, Murray Bartlett & more
New York City’s own King Princess – the project of Brooklyn-based vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer and actor Mikaela Straus – announces her triumphant third record Girl Violence today. Her first release with section1, Girl Violence will be out on September 12th, with lead single “RIP KP” out today. The song was debuted last night with a performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and is out now alongside a Warren Fu-directed masterpiece, as well as an announcement of a global tour.
Made in collaboration with Jake Portrait (Lil Yachty, Alex G, Unknown Mortal Orchestra), and Aire Atlantica (breakthrough: SZA’s “Low”), this new King Princess record 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 NYC 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.
The video for lead single “RIP KP,” directed by Warren Fu, finds King Princess in her own personal hell: a particularly demonic – and extremely gay – afterlife limbo. The song itself serves as one of the album’s defining statements. Brimming with erotic euphoria and King Princess’ voice cracking with lust, “RIP KP” is hands-down the sexiest cut she’s ever conceived. Straus tears into the uninhibited edges of desire with reckless abandon while straddling the line between vulgar and proper, calling into question if that line even exists in the first place.
King Princess says of the song: “‘RIP KP’ is about the sexy side of girl violence - when love takes over your brain like a cordyceps and suddenly you’re getting fucked all over your house, acting a fool. It’s the perfect way to open the record: dramatic, unhinged, and a little tongue-in-cheek. I wrote it during a full ego death - leaving LA, my label, my old life - and somehow landed back in NYC making the music I would’ve obsessed over at 15. It’s a slutty anthem for the lesbians. We need debauchery this summer.”
King Princess will preview the brilliance of Girl Violence in full tonight for an intimate, sold-out crowd of lucky fans at Market Hotel in Brooklyn, and will take it on the road for a proper tour later this year. Starting off at Austin City Limits in October, 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. Tickets go on-sale Friday, June 13 at 10am local time - see below to find a show near you, and get your tickets HERE.
The announcement of Girl Violence comes in the midst of Mikaela Straus’ television debut, as she stars in the current 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.
Tour Dates
June 4 - Market Hotel - Brooklyn, NY ** SOLD OUT **
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
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 Cunningham
