Katie Gavin is re-introducing herself. The lead singer and songwriter of MUNA has started a new chapter, releasing her first solo single Aftertaste. The track is the first offering from her upcoming debut album, What A Relief, set to be released on Phoebe Bridgers' Saddest Factory Records on October 25. Aftertaste is a perfect pop song  that encapsulates the adrenaline rush of romantically charged recklessness.

As Katie describes, "Aftertaste is a sweet song about carrying a torch for someone, realising that you are going out to concerts and parties hoping to run into them there. The song is a playing out of a fantasy, really, both because it involves confessing your crush and finding out that it is reciprocated. I thought this song would be a good place to start because to me it kind of serves as a bridge, sonically and thematically, between MUNA’s world and the world we are going to with the solo record." We chatted with Katie about pursuing solo music and crafting the sonic and visual world of Katie Gavin:

Congratulations, it's a huge day for you! I love this song. I feel like it's the perfect beginning to this new world that you're building, which is obviously extra personal. Even the way it begins, the chords and the first few lyrics kind of feels like you're coming home to yourself. It just sounds so nostalgic. I read that you said that this was the perfect place to begin to f bridge the world of MUNA and your solo music. So tell us a little bit about this new world that you're building with this new venture?

Thank you so much. Yeah, definitely. The solo songs have come together like over a very long period of time. So it was a record that was made in a very different way than we've made the last couple of MUNA records. Those have been more like consolidated and like thought out efforts of world building, but this is just kind of like a life over I think seven years. I will say that the thing that feels like a bridge about Aftertaste is it has like certain qualities that are already in the MUNA  world. We have so many songs of different genres and in our discography, and this eels like the one that is on the record that could probably fit into the discography the best. I would say that the other songs on the record are maybe just not as… like it’s a very sparse and intimate record. I just wanted it to be about the songs themselves and I feel like it's gonna be a different energy when we're performing live. Aftertaste is a record I could see maybe playing at a MUNA show but for a lot of the stuff at a solo show I feel like people are gonna be sitting down. So it's just a different vibe.

So when you say these songs span seven years, has this idea of putting out solo album been on your mind for a while? Was it an easy decision? I can imagine it probably takes a lot of courage to commit to releasing music as just yourself and not have that facade of a band.

It's a good question. I think the honest answer is that it wasn't easy to make the decision. The thing that made it possible was, like, over those years is that these are all the songs that I had shown to Naomi and Jo at one point. If we felt like we could have made them work in the MUNA world, then I wouldn't have made a solo record. But I  knew that these songs weren't going to come out on MUNA. My friends in my community heard these other songs and I got encouragement from people just being like you might have something else here. I remember having a conversation where I decided that this is probably going to be the best thing for me to do as an artist, because these songs also feel like a part of who I am. So much of what I think like determines where you go next as an artist has to do with putting stuff out into the world and seeing how that feels and seeing what you missed. You're always going to get something wrong and then you continue to make art because you're correcting yourself, right? So it just felt right to me that these should get released because I love these songs too. It was hard to talk to Naomi and Jo about it, but they made it easy because they were just so supportive. We've known for a couple years that this was something that was gonna happen and we just strategically like figured out that we were gonna wait to do the solo stuff until after the third album. I also think that being on a label, like being signed to Phoebe was helpful because she's known to do different projects and different iterations. I've taken courage from her and seeing how she's benefited as a writer from existing in different ways like that.

Her label feels like the perfect fit for this. After working on this for the last couple of years can you now easily distinguish between a MUNA song and a Katie song and what distinguishes them?

I think I wouldn't distinguish it on my own because if I showed something to Naomi and Jo, and they wanted to work on it then that would make it a MUNA song. I would say that if I was trying to break it down, I think it has a lot to do with lyrical content more than anything else. If it feels like  I am writing from a very like specific place that's like Katie at home in my kind of small domestic life that is not necessarily like what we are as interested in like right now with MUNA. So it generally like slots more into the Katie world. It's almost like a question of scale because MUNA has become, like we're kind of these queer almost superheroes for ourselves, you know? I mean, also the caveat is that whatever rule I try and put out there to define the difference, there's going to be exceptions to that. Because at the end of the day, it is just something that we're feeling out as we go.  

Is it true that you wrote Aftertaste on the same day as Silk Chiffon?

Yeah, I started… well, I didn't write all of Silk Chiffon in a day. We started that song and then I went to Nashville and finished it with  Daniel Tashian and Ian Fitchuk. But Aftertaste, I wrote on the same day.

What was happening like in your world at that time? Obviously you have created some great songs out of that little time period of your life.

I was living in Glendale with my best friend. Glendale is like a city that's just North of LA. A lot of people are moving there now. I had gone to like one of my friend's concerts and I think Aftertaste was kind of a result of… I mean, it’s an embellishment. It's like a fantasy version of what happened that night. But I did have this experience of seeing somebody that I hadn't seen and kind of realising that I had gone too far to the show, partially because I was hoping that I would see that person there. I think also it was a time in my life when I had taken a lot of time off of dating and then I was starting to dip a toe back in and I felt different as a person. I just felt a lot of possibility. I think it was summer, it was a very charged time. There was a lot of potential and heat in the air.

Yeah, you can hear that. Do you have like a favourite lyric from Aftertaste?

Hmm, I think honestly, ‘you're the only reason I came here’. It's nice when you get to a chorus and you do that thing where you’re almost touching a painfully true and vulnerable thing throughout an entire song to make it okay to say it. So I think that whole song is just so that i could say ‘you’re the only reason why I came here’.

I love that. What's been like the most rewarding part? I know it's only just out, and this is the beginning of everyone in the world hearing it, but what's been the most rewarding part so far for you of this process of planning the album and getting ready to release it? Has there been anything you've learned about yourself through that?

Oh yeah, that's such a good question. I think that getting to explore my sensibilities in terms of the visual side of the record has been really, really rewarding. Getting to co-direct the music video for Aftertaste with Alexa [Viscius], it's felt very, very important for me and the way that it all worked out. So, I'm from Chicago, I’m from the Midwest, and when we were trying to find someone who could work on the music video who was down to co direct, she was one of the people that came up and when we realised that the only way that we could make it work is if I went to Chicago and she is from Chicago. I was just like, oh, of course I gotta go back home. It just felt very meant to be. I've had to go back a little bit to doing a lot of stuff myself once again, just cause of the scale of the project, like it's a lot smaller. But I love that shit. So that has been really fun. Also it's been very meaningful to have to make creative decisions  on my own but also not feel on my own about it. I still get to like have Jo and Naomi as my confidants. I still get to run stuff by them and get their support. I think the music industry is really hard and my heart honestly goes out to anybody that does a solo project and does things on their own. It's so much harder to take care of yourself mentally if you don't have other people going through it with you. But yeah, learning that I can  make decisions on my own is really special.

You're so lucky to have such a good support system around you creatively like that.  

It's true. It's really true. It's very rare.

So many people, when I speak to them, mention MUNA and you as a songwriter as people that they are excited about in music or that they look up to. Is there anyone exciting you right now? It feels like a really great time to be releasing music.  

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited by everyone right now. There's so many cool people making cool choices. I just listened to the Remi [Wolf] record on the plane over here and I think that her songs are amazing. I’m so excited about that album. We just got a new signee to Saddest Factory and her artist name is jasmine.4.t. Lucy and Phoebe and Julian produced the album and I think it's going to be really special. I'm excited to dive into Clairo’s Charm. The colour of that record is my favourite colour.

I know you're doing a few intimate shows later this year so how will your shows differ to a MUNA show?

So It's not going to be a full band. It's just gonna be me and this other girl named Nana Adjoa. Actually, I'm really excited about Nana's music as well. A lot of her stuff is not out yet, but she's making a record that I think is going to be amazing. She’s from Amsterdam. She was in the studio working with Tony Berg when I was making the record and so she ended up playing on some of the songs. She’s a multi instrumentalist so we're figuring out arrangements for the songs that are very pared down. MUNA shows, we want them to feel huge and full of energy. I think that this will be probably a calmer experience. I'm gonna need it to be calmer because I'm very nervous to be doing so much of the instrumentation again on my own. It’s something I haven't done in a long time.

Cool, well, I feel like this is gonna be such a fulfilling chapter for you. I know it's probably such a nerve-racking thing to do, but it feels like it's the perfect time for everyone to hear this.

Listen to Aftertaste HERE.

@katiegavs