Katie Gavin of Muna Transforms "a Lot of Feelings" into Her Debut Solo Album and Steps in for Chappell Roan | Vanity Fair

Katie Gavin, front woman of the queer indie band Muna, was 10 years old when she started writing songs. “I have a lot of feelings and I’ve always been very expressive,” Gavin, whose debut solo project, What a Relief, is out Friday, tells Vanity Fair over Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. So when she was tasked by her fourth-grade music teacher with writing a song about their school mascot, she came up with something unexpectedly profound though not particularly peppy: “Soaring through the air / so lightly and freely / I feel like a brush and the world is my painting.” “That was my vibe,” she says with a smile as her cats, Zip and Button, zigzag across her living room. “Just a little girl being like, ‘I’ve got lots going on in my heart.”

That same music teacher continued to follow Gavin’s rising career but passed away a couple years ago. “I went back to my hometown and did an acoustic version of that song at her funeral,” Gavin says. “It was really special.” Particularly because it was people like this teacher, and Gavin’s parents, who encouraged her musical abilities. “It just meant a lot,” she says. “Being that type of kid, it’s not always fostered, but for me it was.”

Gavin went on to study popular music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she formed Muna with classmates Josette Maskin and Naomi McPherson. Together, the band has been at the forefront of indie pop for the last decade, carving out a prominent space in the industry for music about queer love and longing. With three critically acclaimed albums in their repertoire, they have headlined international tours, performed the festival circuit with stops at Coachella and Lollapalooza, and grown their audience by opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour. They’ve even added a podcast, Gayotic, that showcases the band’s dysfunctional but charming dynamic alongside guests like Trixie Mattel, to their oeuvre.

Still, imposter syndrome manages to creep in for Gavin. “Something I want to work on is my relationship to how much success we actually have had and actually letting it in and processing it and feeling gratitude for it,” she says, reflecting on her career. “I think I have a disease of just feeling perpetually on the outside or perpetually up and coming.”

It’s a mindset that has fueled her work ethic, but Gavin has already cemented herself as a prolific songwriter. First with the 2021 career-defining hit “Silk Chiffon,” which has over 80 million plays on Spotify, and now on her first solo record, What a Relief, where she brazenly veers into a new lane, finding her voice in a collection of songs that lay a raw, folk-inspired drape over Gavin’s already polished pop sensibilities.

Written over the course of the last seven years, the album started as part of what Gavin calls a “Muna discard pile.” Occasionally, she would bring a song to the band that ultimately didn’t feel reflective of the group and would file it away. But eventually, she started sharing those songs with other trusted collaborators like her friend, the musician Eric Radloff, for feedback. “We would just be having conversations and I would send him [songs] that were related,” she says. “That kind of fostered the beginning of a sense that there could be a life for these other songs.”

Then, right before the pandemic, Radloff invited Gavin to open for him at an intimate show in LA. “I just showed up and played the songs and it felt really good,” she says. That sense of connection encouraged her to keep the flame alive. “Then when the pandemic happened, Eric and my friend Scott [Heiner] and I started working on arranging the songs.”

That year, Muna, while working on their third album, was dropped from RCA records. It gave Gavin time to explore and find her footing as a solo artist, even while still working on a Muna album. Soon after, Phoebe Bridgers signed Muna to her independent record label, Saddest Factory Records. When Bridgers heard Gavin’s own demos, she paired Gavin with her producer, Tony Berg, to refine the record. They emerged with 12 tracks that reintroduce Gavin to her fans intimately, revealing her innermost desires and inviting them on her journey of self-discovery.

Described as “Lilith Fair-core,” by Gavin, the album reflects the music that she grew up with, and the female artists, like Tracy Chapman and The Chicks, who helped her navigate coming of age. “I had a real return to Tori [Amos] and Ani [DiFranco], the Indigo Girls, and Melissa Etheridge and all of those amazing artists in my 20s, kind of bleeding into the time when I started working on this album.” Gavin skillfully channels these influences and that expressive 10-year-old girl she once was, embracing her big feelings on romantic tracks like “Aftertaste,” “As Good as It Gets,” (feat. Mitski), and a hypnotizing standout track, “Sanitized.” In between Gavin’s exploration of self, she also examines familial bonds and generational trauma on “The Baton,” and “Inconsolable.”

Though the album is effortlessly strung together, Gavin admits the process hasn’t been easy. “I tend to have dips emotionally when a project is coming out because it is so vulnerable and can be scary,” she says. “I’m really feeling that this is just me in a way that it hasn’t been before.” It’s also been a balancing act as she juggles work on a forthcoming Muna album. “I don’t know if I’m doing a good job of it, and I cried to them about it, but they’re like, shut up,” says Gavin, who adds that Maskin and McPherson have been nothing but supportive. “They really have, they’ve never said anything. Not one thing that has made me feel weird about doing this. The only thing that they say is that they want me to take care of myself. I’m just really, really, really lucky to have them. I love them.”

Last month, when Chappell Roan pulled out of her headlining spot at All Things Go Music Festival at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York, citing mental health struggles, Muna stepped in to perform. Gavin’s grateful that their love and support for Roan was able to manifest in the form of tangible support (and an acoustic rendition of Roan’s hit “Good Luck, Babe!”) for her during that time. “I was proud of how everybody rose to the occasion,” she says. “She’s an icon. She’s made for this, I don’t really think anything is going to stop her, but she needs time and grace.”

The situation also presented an opportunity to reflect on the band’s journey so far. ”We’ve had 10 years of opportunity to grow without blowing up,” she says humbly. She likens Roan’s meteoric rise to a traumatic experience, calling celebrity status unnatural, and is grateful to have been able to go at her own pace. “I’ve only played a couple of solo shows, but one of them was in this old church and I had everybody sit on the floor and it just felt really gentle and calm,” she says. “It’s very yin-and-yang energy.” Fostering intimate connections with What a Relief, is exactly what she set out to do. “I want communion with the crew. I’m excited for that,” she says.

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