Maya Hawke has released “Dark,” the stunning next single from her upcoming album, Chaos Angel, to be released May 31st via Mom+Pop. Chaos Angel is the talented multi-hyphenate’s third album and follows the success of lauded sophomore full-length, Moss. Created with Maya’s longstanding collaborators Christian Lee Huston, Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe, Chaos Angel is a deeply beautiful, meditative album about falling in love, fucking it up, and getting back up again. The track’s release once again sees Maya collaborating with director Alex Ross Perry for a visual that is very otherworldly indeed.
Still only 25 years old, Maya has received global acclaim for her exquisite songwriting and witty, narrative lyricism. “Dark” follows the release of last month’s amazing song “Missing Out,” which Maya debuted on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. “Dark” shows a more intimate side of Chaos Angel, detailing times in Maya’s life where anxiety threatened to fully consume her.
Says Maya, “‘Dark’ is a cut and dry love song about a relationship struggling to find its footing. It’s about trying to sort out the mixed bag of history and pain two people bring into a new love to find the path forward. The chorus was written a few years ago when I was going through a particularly debilitating bout of bedtime anxiety: I would lay in bed with the fear that if I let myself fall asleep, my brain would forget how to breathe and I would die in my sleep. I saw a doctor who told me that I had to become okay with dying. He said if I accepted it, I would be able to sleep and would likely…not die. He was right, I didn’t die. And I wrote this song to celebrate it.”
Chaos Angel takes the spare, viscerally honest songwriting Maya has made her name on and goes deeper, bolder. Both her most sonically sophisticated and thematically nuanced collection to date, it feels like a culmination. Across these 10 songs, Maya catalogs upheavals, revelations, foibles, and broken promises, all while navigating the patterns we repeat while growing older, wandering astray, and finding our way back to some core understanding of ourselves.
Chaos Angel is also a document of Maya coming more fully into her own as a musician. Many of these tracks are still anchored by acoustic guitar and Maya’s graceful yet conversational vocals, but their surroundings are more intricate and lush than ever before.
At first glance, there are scenes just as sad as those on Blush and Moss, but Chaos Angel is an altogether happier album. Through these songs, Maya accepts the cycles we travel, the things we can leave behind and the things that will always be with us, before concluding: “The only thing to regret is the time I’ve spent regretting.” That’s what Chaos Angel became in the end: a portrait of a person, complicated and still searching, but evolving.
In celebration of her upcoming album, she also announces special record release shows. On Saturday, June 1st she performs both early and late sets at Third Man Records in Nashville, TN. Followed by a show at Buckhead Theatre in Atlanta, GA on Sunday, June 2.
Saturday June 1 (early show) – Third Man Records – Nashville, TN
Saturday June 1 (late show) – Third Man Records – Nashville, TN
Sunday, June 2 – Buckhead Theatre – Atlanta, GA
STREAM “MISSING OUT” HERE
PRE-SAVE ‘CHAOS ANGEL’ HERE
About Mom+Pop Music:
In their 16th year, Mom+Pop Music has curated a critically acclaimed list of artists including Courtney Barnett, MGMT, Beach Bunny, Caamp, Ashe, Orion Sun, Porter Robinson, SEB, Tom Morello, and many others. Solely owned and operated by Founder/co-owner Michael Goldstone and co-owner Thaddeus Rudd, M+P has a global team of 25 people and is self-distributed. Known for their artist-first ethos, M+P continues to amass industry accolades from artists, media, and colleagues including Billboard’s Independent Label Power Lists, A2IM’s Libera Award for Label of the Year, and other recognition. They have received consistent media acclaim featured in Forbes, Variety, Billboard and HITS among other outlets. Mom+Pop Music is located in New York City and has offices in Los Angeles.
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