MIA JUNE
- 15 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Words: Joseph Maranta
Images: Peter Sherlock - @petersstuff02
In the coming years, or even decades, Mia June will look back at 2026 through a haze of plaudits as the most important year of her career. It won’t mark the release of her magnum opus project, it likely won’t be the year she lands a supporting slot for an A-list artist, but it is the year that fundamentally shifted her creative process; sonically and methodologically.
After three years of EPs which gradually leaned further into a stripped-back world of indie / folk balladry, June’s latest single Pet comes as a forthright indicator that a new era of hers is here. A staunch diversion from the dulcet tones permeating through her discography, on her latest release June embraces abrasive guitars and crashing percussion which complements her cynical, near spiteful writing.
It’s a song which serves more than just an early look into June’s future sound, it’s a signifier that she’s become the centre of her writing, using an introspective lens to bring her own experiences and unique perspectives to the fore.
Here’s our recent chat with her.
JOE: Hey Mia, thanks for taking the time to have a chat! What have you been up to today?
MIA: I just got back from camping last night with my partner and his brother! We got back this morning from somewhere on the Mornington Peninsula. I’m not exactly sure where we were, I still don’t really know my way around Victoria.
JOE: You’ve only been there for a year-and-a-half, so that makes sense. Has the move from Perth to Melbourne lived up to your expectations?
MIA: I wouldn’t say it’s lived up to expectations, it’s just been different. It hasn’t been better, or worse, just different to what I was expecting.
Before moving I’d visited Melbourne two or three times, but visiting is obviously very different to living somewhere. I moved here when I was 20, and although I’m only 22 I do feel a lot older than I did when I moved. I came here very excited, and I do love Melbourne, but it’s much more intense than I expected, especially coming from Perth where it’s much slower.
JOE: Have you been able to settle into the Melbourne music scene at least?
MIA: It’s definitely far denser than the scene back home. I wouldn’t use the word cliquey to describe it, but I think that because of the amount of musicians here, a lot of artists play within their own genre. So there’s more pockets, which you could call cliques, but I think it’s more that musicians would rather play within the same type of music at shows.
It can be hard to find your place here if no one has heard of you, or if you haven’t established yourself in the scene yet.
But honestly, I don’t think I’ve put myself out there enough yet, which is why I just did a residency at Nighthawks in Collingwood. I could feel myself starting to settle in a bit more after that, and I want to try to push myself by playing more gigs, because I don’t want to believe that Melbourne actually is cliquey.
JOE: Was it hard to avoid the trap of just hanging around fellow Perth to Melbourne migrants?
MIA: [Laughs] I’m doing exactly that. I’m in that trap.
I love my friends and everyone from Perth I know here, but it is a pipeline and I need to branch out. I’m trying to do that through playing more gigs and meeting new people through that.
JOE: Speaking about your music now, the first EP you released since the move was ‘Brain Like Computer’, did Melbourne have any effect on that project?
MIA: That project was actually written in 2024 before I left Perth, though a few of the songs were about moving to Melbourne. Those songs were about the guilt I had for leaving my family. I’m very close with my immediate family, since it’s just us in Australia, the rest of my family lives in Wales.
Forever was written about that guilt specifically. I ended up releasing the entire EP in the midst of finding my feet in Melbourne, so I don’t know if it got as much attention from me as it deserved, since I just wanted to get it out and focus on being in a new city.
JOE: I noticed that ‘Brain Like Computer’ marked your third consecutive year of releasing a project. Is it nice to relieve the burden of an annual project by not releasing an EP or album in 2026?
MIA: Yes, definitely.
I’ve given myself permission to work on a project for an extended period of time. I write a lot of music and I get very excited by that, and all I want to do is get it out there for people to listen to.
I’m not sure if this is the right thing to say, since it can be frowned upon, but at times I can be disappointed by the metrics when I release music. I spend a lot of time writing songs, recording them and producing them. I give those songs everything I have, and sometimes it can be disappointing if that music doesn’t reach as many people as it could’ve if I’d given promotion more of my attention. It just doesn’t come naturally to me.
And for the record, I truly don’t mean to sound ungrateful for those who are listening to my music, I’m so thankful for every single person who listens to my songs, and it brings me so much joy to know that anyone at all is listening. I can see my audience growing, slowly but surely, and I would play shows to 20 people forever if they wanted to hear the music. I just think that my process has been rushed in the past when it comes to releasing music and getting it out there before I’ve got a plan.
This year I’ve made a point of stepping back and picking out a selection of songs that I really want to work hard on, and building a visual identity around them while giving each track the attention it deserves when I release them.
JOE: Would your latest single, ‘Pet’ be an example of that new mindset? It was written years ago and it doesn’t sound at all like your past projects from the time it was written.
MIA: Yeah, absolutely.
I was very intentional with releasing Pet as my first single since Brain Like Computer. I feel like Pet kicks off a new sound of mine, a slightly heavier, rockier form of the music I’ve been making.
But I feel like it does relate to the rest of my discography, but maybe that’s just because I wrote it.
JOE: Although it does standalone sonically, the song itself reminded me quite a lot of my favourite song of yours, ‘The Way it Is’ off your 2024 project, Moth Penny Casino. Was Pet written during the creation of that EP?
MIA: It was, yes. I wrote a lot of songs during the start of 2023, including my next single.
[Laughs] That was a very inspiration-rich time for me.
JOE: WA singers like Ullah and Carla Geneve have also embraced distortion and heavier elements at times in their music, were they of any inspiration for your new sonic direction?
MIA: Honestly not really, not to discount either of them of course. Ullah is a good friend of mine and I was actually mentored by Carla when I was in a band program as a teenager, so I love them both.
But Pet would probably have drawn most from Mitski’s album Puberty 2. It’s one of her earlier albums and I’ve listened to it so many times. I’d say it’s a big influence on how crunchy and fuzzed-up my new songs can be.
JOE: The lyrics behind Pet and The Way It Is are clearly born from frustration, but since those songs were written, have you found yourself processing anger and bitterness differently in your writing?
MIA: I think I’m more introspective now.
I’m not writing to say ‘you did this’ or ‘you did that’, but instead bringing in my thought process and how I exist into my own songwriting.
JOE: Since relationships play a big part in the music you make, are you ever wary of how the subjects of your songs will interpret your writing?
MIA: There is a satisfaction in writing a song about someone who has hurt you, whether it’s a serious thing or something insignificant, there is something satisfying regardless knowing that they’ll hear it, and that they’ll know it’s about them.
You’ll always want the last word, especially in petty things like break ups. But I don’t want to hurt anyone, so I’ll never say anything awful about somebody in a song.
I wouldn’t say I worry about how they interpret it, however. Music is art and art is expression. It’s my own experience so I deserve to say how it made me feel in a song I write.
JOE: With the new direction you're taking, what aspects of your past songwriting / production do you want to hold on to?
MIA: I’ll always write songs the same way.
It’s a very personal thing for me, as it is for many other people, so I don’t have any desire to co-write my own songs, for lyrics specifically.
Instrumentally, I’m lucky to collaborate with my band members. My guitarist Paddy comes up with or contributes to a lot of his guitar parts in my music, we essentially co-wrote the song Tethered off my last EP, instrumentally. And I can’t play the drums, so I’ll explain the type of part I’m envisioning for a song to my drummer, Ethan, but ultimately he’s the one that can translate that to actually playing the drums and writing a solid part.
Production wise I’ve always kept things quite simple, mainly working in home studios with close friends, and that’s something I’d like to hold on to. But I can’t say that definitively as every experience I have in the studio is different, and I’d like to be open to doing new things.
JOE: Finally, what’s the rest of 2026 look like for Mia June?
MIA: I’m recording currently, and I’ll have two more songs out by the end of the year.
I’ll be playing a lot more gigs in Melbourne, and hopefully doing a mini-tour, including a stop back in Perth.
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