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Chapter 1: What is the significance of being in a band according to MUNA?
Cheating on your partner is a huge breach of trust.
All of the pain and the guilt and the reality of what was happening hit me just like a tidal wave all at once.
Why do people cheat? And why does it make us so mad even when we're not the ones it's happening to? That's this week on Explain It To Me. New episodes Sundays wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome to Switched on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. I really think that everyone should try being in a band at least once. The most fun I've ever had has been playing in them. I had my high school jam band phase, then college indie rock, then post-college Americana. Even this podcast is kind of a band. We just talk instead of play. I'm not alone in thinking that bands are important.
I was recently reading a piece in Time called In Defense of the Band, which makes this case that a band is a salve for our hyper-individualized, hyper-commodified world. It's a real opportunity to make a connection. It was written by Katie Gavin of the band Moona, which is Katie, Josette Maskin, and Naomi McPherson. They're one of my absolute favorite bands right now.
I wanted to talk with them because I wanted to hear from all of them why being in a band matters. And I also wanted to hear about their recent album, Dancing on the Wall.
I'm on call. Shouldn't set yourself on fire.
got this big 80s over-the-top production on the surface it's an infectious pop record underneath the lyrics draw on the collective activism mutual aid the fights against climate change and war but really it's about how we can be our best together here's my conversation with moona Joe, Katie, Naomi, thanks for being on the show. Really appreciate it.
Thanks for having us.
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Chapter 2: How does MUNA's new album reflect their collective identity?
I think that is the most like useful thing about like being in a band because it creates an identity that is outside of yourself, you know? And I think that's always been part of like Muna's kind of vibe, if that makes any sense. Yeah.
Or like if we are having success, it doesn't feel like it's like me, the person is having success. Yeah. It feels like... This idea that is a collective idea between the three of us and also shared with the fans and the people who like our music. It feels like not just a win for me personally when something good happens for us. It feels like a kind of cool shared experience.
I love this. It's a little personal. I'm restarting a band, getting back together with my old college collaborator two decades ago. That's so cool. I think there's probably no better way than demonstrating our collaboration than talking about your new music. You have this album, Dancing on the Wall. I want to start from the top, Get So Hot.
It begins in a state, I feel like, of disorientation where we're in the summer heat in L.A., sun beating down on concrete, no palm trees to block out the sun.
Sun beats down on the concrete. It beats so hard, not even a palm tree. The house I live in doesn't have AC. It gets so...
It's a dance song, but at the very beginning, we can't even identify a downbeat. So we're like kind of lost. Eventually, four to the floor, drum beat comes in.
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Chapter 3: What are the themes explored in the song 'It Gets So Hot'?
And it's kind of just like this repeated refrain.
It makes me think of like a Donna Summer kind of song. It's not like verse, chorus, verse, chorus. It's a pure dance song. Could you use this as an example of just how did this happen as a collaboration and how did you decide to put this out first as the thing that we first hear?
This is arguably like one of the most sort of like in the way that people might stereotypically think of, like, band collaboration, this is kind of the closest to that on this record. In the sense that, like, we were in Nashville with Daniel Toshin, who's an amazing songwriter who works with Kacey Musgraves and a ton of other people, and he really just... has such an awesome vibe. He's so cute.
He knows when to, like, step in and say something or to just, like, let you cook and be, like, a vibe curator and just create the space within which the music happens. But in this particular instance, he had been on a vacation with his family and he had this little, like... game boy looking ass, like essentially portable doll, like machine.
And he made this little synth loop and he was like, I'm just going to play you guys some stuff. And then there was like a loop that was sort of, it is, it is this, I mean, we've like edited the sounds. Yeah. Um, but the baseline, the baseline, the lead synth, I ended up like programming it on another, on another synth. But yeah, we took this beat from him, cut it up,
made the form that it has, and we were just like looping it. And it was like stream of consciousness lyrics. But it was your idea to be like, it's something like it gets so hot. Yeah, we went to barbecue and it was really hot outside. Yeah, in the morning, it's just one of those things that happens. I mean, it's been happening in LA and New York the past couple of weeks.
We're in May now, so the seasons are changing, but... It's a pure dance song, but it's disorienting. And I think you're hitting the nail on the head. There is something sort of unsettling and unsettled about the heat. It is like it penetrates the song and creates this sort of like dizzying, disorienting mirage on the top of a hill kind of like sense.
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Chapter 4: How does MUNA describe their collaborative songwriting process?
Yeah. Yeah. And also when I first moved to LA and we were at USC, like that kind of burdensome sun on these like endless stretches of concrete in like food deserts. There's like a feeling of like, I live in a dystopia. And so therefore I'm going to behave like a heathen. And I think that that was enough.
to work with for like to build this world of the song and naomi has said before that like that track on the album kind of serves as the like in fair verona yeah the record like it's like it's setting the scene of like this is where we are playing out this drama
I feel like it's really appropriate then maybe to go to the title track, which comes right after that, Dancing on the Wall. Yeah. Because I feel like it is a big dance production, but something is wrong.
Yeah. That's classic Moona.
Something is not right. If I'm not crying on the dance floor, something's not right. Sure.
Yeah, that's kind of our specialty.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's supposed to be a 90 degree turn from Lionel Richie's Dancing on the Ceiling. I think you really established this pristine 80s pop production. I was wondering, maybe, Jo, if you could start with how do you go about, in your collaboration, deciding on what the sound and the vibe of the thing is going to be?
I feel like a lot of it came as a post-reaction to our last record, where we kind of felt like Moona had to be as expansive. As possible, this record, we really wanted to make a record that feels like everything is connected and it's in a time and space.
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Chapter 5: What is the message behind the song 'Big Stick'?
affecting things like on a global scale it's become like either more like just like uh one-to-one like mutual aid relationships or like focusing on really local issues and like my local my community and um i think that kind of led to this interest in like
Yeah, like having a song that for us is like... It's really cute because it's like... We had a friend who had a birthday party at Capri last week. And this is a bar in Eagle Rock. And we basically have a song for her, you know? It also feels kind of fun because I think it's very...
accepted and commonplace for people to want to shit on la for some reasons that are maybe grounded in some truth and then some that are just like patently absurd and so it felt i don't know it felt kind of like punk for us to like be like no we like it and toes down yeah we're holding it down but I think it took on an added layer of meaning for us.
We wrote it, or Katie brought the demo to us in maybe the summer of 2024, I think, and we started working on it, and we were instantly, once we got that, like, the chant, like, post-chorus moment, we were like, oh, we got it. The song finishes itself from here. We figured it out. And we had been working on it.
And then at the beginning of 2025, the wildfires happened and it added an emotional layer for us that wasn't there before, colored it sort of differently.
Like a lot of friends displaced, a lot of burnt out homes. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. It was horrible. But a lot of people being like, I'm like staying because this is my home and I love this place. Yeah, and people stepping up for each other in a way that I think goes against the stereotype about Los Angeles. People don't know shit about LA. They don't. They know about certain areas.
Which is great. You also wrote a song which is about a specific area. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's not even...
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Chapter 6: What advice does MUNA offer for aspiring musicians?
Yeah, it does so much more than just joyous, poppy, infectious thing. One thing I wanted to start with was the sort of low baritone vocals that sound, they remind me, they're like east side girls.
Yeah.
Like, they remind me of, like, Oh Yeah. Or, like, Spin Me Right Round.
Yeah, it's definitely, it's a reference to, what is it a reference to? I can't remember the name.
I'm not, I don't remember.
Are you thinking of West End Girl?
Yes.
Yes, but also the vocal thing is definitely, I mean, it's just like, it's not an 80s rip, but it's an 80s rip. Yeah. Yeah, I literally don't remember. It's fine. Okay. The chant.
I'm laughing at you being like, it's a reference to.
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Chapter 7: What influences shaped the production of 'Dancing on the Wall'?
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So we've got a song about our local community and the whole world. Yeah.
The whole world.
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