For immediate release:
July 14, 2021
NYC-BASED SYNTH-POP TRIO
MOON KISSED
ANNOUNCE SOPHOMORE ALBUM
I'D LIKE TO TELL YOU SOMETHING IMPORTANT
DUE OUT OCTOBER 22, 2021
& SHARE THE FIRST SINGLE
"BUBBLEGUM"
WITH A NEW MUSIC VIDEO
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"Every audience transforms the moment they play their first note: people push closer to the front, mouths become wider, eyes sparkle, and bodies move freely... This is how Moon Kissed has built their fan base: no gimmicks, no social media gags. They do it old school—you get what you get, and what you get addicts you. And once you’ve been hooked you’ll keep coming back for the high."
- Honeysuckle Magazine
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NYC-based synth-pop trio, Moon Kissed, announce their sophomore album, I’d Like To Tell You Something Important, due out October 22 and share first single, "Bubblegum," today along with a music video. Moon Kissed is not a "girl band." They are a force that, when creatively combined, creates a vortex of safety that can be physically and emotionally experienced through the joy of pure freedom, where it's ok to be weird -- in fact, it's encouraged. Expression within the container of Moon Kissed culture looks like bravery, joy, body love, happy tears (and all kinds of tears/release) and full-body chills. This new album is an extension of that energy.
On the new single, "Bubblegum," Khaya Cohen says, “Bubblegum” is an anthem about using the patriarchy to get what you want. If men are going to think of us as tiny and harmless, we can harness that into a power to “use them then eclipse them” in the words of my friend Zoey. The mix of punk and adorable digital is a resistance to being boxed in. A blend of lyrical and sonic sarcasm, cuteness, ferocity and anger “Bubblegum” lends a hand to coping with the frustrations of dealing with men."
The new single follows the stand-alone release of "Clubbing In Your Bedroom" and a remix EP of the track. "Clubbing In Your Bedroom" is an ode to everything people lost during Covid when it came to connecting, dancing and just being with each other -- a true shared struggle over the past year and a half. The original song was written and produced by Khaya Cohen and Emily Sgouros after a late night of clubbing in Emily’s bedroom. It was mixed and mastered by Justin Van Der Volgen and the music video was edited by Leah Scarpati.
A common thread in the band's current releases is joy as an act of resistance and Moon Kissed acts as a permission slip to feel free in your body and soul even within the confines of the world today. At their core, this band is a magnet for self-expression without hesitation. That's how they formed, after all. When Emily, Khaya, and Leah met at a Lower East Side New Years party in 2019, they knew they had to start a band. It was instant. The energy between them had that rare storybook (once-in-a-generation) vibrancy that warrants comparisons to trail-blazing acts like The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Killers, etc.
On stage, the band transcends stale expectations associated with “live music” and brings, to every audience, something completely new and saturated with a pulsating otherness. Now that Moon Kissed and NYC are officially back in action, the band is back on stage. With a sold-out show on June 18th in Brooklyn, and a last-minute epic show the Friday before that, the high-energy they're known for is in full force. Be sure to stay tuned for show announcements and new content from Moon Kissed.
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BIO
NYC’s Moon Kissed is that once-in-a-blue-moon band that creates their own community as they rise in the musical ranks. They are much more than a band; with every show they play they are ushering in a new era of gritty and provocative New York City partying—one where anyone is free to be themselves, gender isn’t real, and the person you’re dancing next to is your best friend but also could be your next makeout partner. With Emily Sgouros on synth, Leah Scarpati on drums, and Khaya Cohen on vocals, Moon Kissed creates an energy, an infectious aura, that, if you are lucky enough to enter it, feels like a secret and an escape, powerful and precious to behold.
Moon Kissed writes about the complexity of our deepest desires: heartbreak and the way it consumes us; the way we change ourselves to satisfy the ones we crave. Their second self-released album, I’d Like To Tell You Something Important, negotiates these themes. The band carefully drowns the listener in a kaleidoscope of raw feeling before rescuing them with pearls of raw wisdom. The album’s message conveys an exciting brand of authenticity that is difficult to find and impossible to fake.
Moon Kissed released their 2019 debut album, I Met My Band At A New Years Party, as a young, unknown band playing small gigs in NYC venues. They had no team, no booking agents or PR personnel and yet, in the two years since then, Moon Kissed has put together two tours and played over a hundred shows. They’ve produced ten music videos together and fans have voted them Deli Mag’s Artists of the Month in 2019 and 2020. Moon Kissed has made a name for themselves by building a loyal fan base in the old-school way: no gimmicks, no social media gags. Moon Kissed has grown quickly because they’re just that good.
Khaya, who graduated from NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music and Emily, a New School graduate, were longtime friends and musical partners. They happened to meet Leah at a New Years Eve party. Since then they’ve written, produced, and gigged together non-stop. Khaya is a self-taught, talented, writer and experimental producer, but the band is adamant about the egalitarian nature of their songwriting process. “I wrote the majority of I Met My Band At A New Years Party before we were a band. I feel like that is what we used to introduce ourselves to each other, those songs. But now that we are a group, I’d Like To Tell You Something Important is definitely more collaborative,” Khaya explains. “I feel that is really important and I am really grateful for that because I know in other bands ego gets involved and everyone has to touch everything. I think it’s really special that we help bring things to the table and just really zoom out and see them as a work of art or a song and just be excited about them no matter who wrote them.”
Moon Kissed’s released “Shake//Those Feelings” last fall. It is an upbeat, dance-y groove with a melancholic story. It’s a song that disguises the pain of yearning for someone with three minutes of lively, sparkling fun before descending into a softer, wistful melody that tells the harsher truth. “‘Shake' is a song about longing – missing the feeling of intense excitement that someone used to give you,” Moon Kissed said. “It’s a song sung from the numb of being in the ‘here’ when you want it to be in the deep of back when.”
“Bubblegum,” the album’s second single is punky, raucous, and fun with an undertone of barely suppressed rage: an in-your-face manifesto addressed to the men who deign to project insecurity on powerful women. Moon Kissed’s range is clear when they’re able to go from songs that interrogate the complexities of coping with heartache to a boot-stomping anthem -- “I know your tiny ego’s bruised/Don’t try to blame me…Chew you up you’re just like bubble gum/I’ll spit you out when I’m done.”
“Strange Satisfaction” is a moody ode to the way that love can be radioactive in all of its consuming qualities. Moon Kissed pushes past cliché to get to a more specific truth intrinsic to the experience of heartbreak. With drums that read melodically like a heartbeat, the song explores the masochistic pleasure, the strange satisfaction, of a heart throbbing with the pain of being broken into pieces. Moon Kissed’s final planned single off the album is a dance anthem that encapsulates the particular energy the band creates in a room called “Saturday Night”. It’s a perfect post-pandemic song that asks for inhibitions to be discarded and bodies to begin moving: not a tall order for anyone who has ever seen Moon Kissed live. The album manages to toe the line between honest melancholia and a pure party atmosphere with a campy edge.
I’d Like To Tell You Something Important is saturated with the paradox of being just as addicted to the low feelings as the high ones. Moon Kissed’s unique talent lies in their ability to produce music that glitters on the surface, driven by synth lines that sparkle, drum melodies that get your heart racing, and hooks that take your mind hostage all while interrogating the more complicated, painful parts of reality.
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