THIS TIME, Donna Missal’s debut album, will be released on September 7 by Harvest Records. Produced by Tim Anderson (Solange, BANKS, Halsey), it spotlights the elegant collision of elements at play in Missal’s music: a poet’s command of tone, a soul singer’s boundless intensity, a bedroom musician’s willful embrace of intimacy and experimentation.
Today, as the album pre-order launched, Missal shared the track “Transformer,” a fiercely charged anthem she describes as being about “having the courage to take what you want from life, without apology.” Fans who pre-order the digital album will instantly receive “Transformer” plus the four tracks Missal released in the lead-up to the album announcement – “Keep Lying,” “Girl,” “Driving” and “Thrills.” Pre-order / pre-save THIS TIME HERE.
Missal will perform at album release shows on both coasts – headlining Rough Trade in Brooklyn on September 10 and The Troubadour in West Hollywood on September 25. She recently sold out her first-ever Los Angeles headline show and completed a sold-out West Coast run with King Princess. In October, Missal will join Bishop Briggs on tour and make her Austin City Limits Music Festival debut. See below for itinerary. Visit donnamissal.com for ticket information.
Blending elements of soul, hip-hop and rock & roll, Missal shaped THIS TIME’s sonic landscape partly by laying live recordings down on tape, then sampling those recordings to imbue her songs with a fresh yet timeless energy. Much of that live recording took place at the iconic Different Fur Studios in San Francisco, where she was joined by musicians such as Nate Mercereau (Leon Bridges).
“I really wanted this album to reference my history of playing in bands,” Missal explains. “It’s all these very pure, talented musicians playing together in a room, but then we took that and sampled it and altered in a way that creates something totally new.”
Lead single “Keep Lying” is off to a strong start at Alternative radio with 18 stations adding the track. After Zane Lowe premiered Missal’s original demo version of “Keep Lying” on Beats 1, it shot to the top of the Spotify Viral and HypeMachine charts.
Missal’s songs have racked up more than 10 million cumulative streams worldwide. In this feature article, Ladygunn observed, “Straightforward and soulful, her tracks thus far are all smoky deliveries of juxtaposing emotions…[Her] willingness to tell personal stories, ones that we rarely get to hear, is evident in her track ‘Girl’ a play by play of the worst aspects of female competition.”Zane Lowe, who premiered “Girl” on Beats 1, praised its “timeless, latter-day Prince vibe.”“Thrills” was heard in a recent episode of “The Bold Type,” airing on Freeform. Missal’s music has also been licensed by such shows as “House of Lies,” “Easy” and “The Vampire Diaries.”
She is featured on two tracks from Macklemore’s latest album, Gemini: “Over It,” which she co-wrote, and “Glorious.” She also featured on Rudimental’s “No Fear” and co-wrote Leon Bridges’ “Bet Ain’t Worth the Hand.” “Power” – an original song she co-wrote with Baz Luhrmann and recorded for Netflix’s “The Get Down” – won the Hollywood Music in Media Award for Best Original Song.