NYC’s Hello Mary – Helena Straight, Stella Wave, and Mikaela Oppenheimer – recently announced the September 13 release of their new album Emita Ox via Frenchkiss Records. They also shared the single “Three,” a song that evokes the fairy tale of a young girl named Emita and her pet ox, which saw support from, among others, The Line Of Best Fit, Kerrang! and DIY. Today they return with the official video for “Three” directed by Mark Cheche. The clip premiered via Paste with the band telling them “We saw other stuff that Mark worked on and thought his animation style was really cool. After hearing ‘three’ he came to us with a concept for the video and we loved it! It was fun to have a clear plot for a music video, especially for this song.” Cheche shares, “When I heard three it immediately became one of my favourite songs, and I felt honoured to get to work with such a dynamic and talented band”.
Emita Ox will mark the follow-up to Hello Mary’s acclaimed 2023 self-titled LP, which Rolling Stone called one of the year’s “sharpest, noisiest debuts.” Since its release the band have ripped into prominence with their fuzzed-out anthems, establishing a darkly playful edge all their own. Possessing a sound that pushes harder into heavy distortion and psychedelic dreamscapes, the new LP sees Hello Mary building out their singular universe of gutsy, virtuosic alt-rock. The band co-produced the album alongside Alex Farrar (MJ Lenderman, Indigo De Souza, Wednesday, Snail Mail) in Asheville, NC.
Hello Mary have been clocked many miles on the road, supporting the likes of Silversun Pickups (who have invited the band on the road multiple times this past year), American Football and more. This summer they’ll make their UK debut playing a smattering of festival dates including End Of The Road, Manchester Psych Fest, and Edinburgh Psych Fest. This will be followed by two London headline dates, at the newly announced 4th September show at The Shacklewell Arms and Brixton’s iconic The Windmill. Hello Mary culminates their UK inauguration with a run of shows as main support for American Football. The trio have also announced a Fall of North America with dates kicking off October 4 in Seattle, WA and concluding November 2 in Houston, TX They play at Los Angeles’ Troubadour on October 10 and New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on October 24. Additionally, the band is confirmed for Las Vegas’ Best Friends Forever Fest on October 11 – 13 and Austin’s Levitation Festival on November 3.
On Emita Ox, Hello Mary push harder into heavy distortion and psychedelic dreamscapes, as they build out their singular universe of gutsy strain of rock. The LP’s labyrinthine production reflects how the band’s musical tastes have expanded from Elliott Smith and Radiohead to encompass experimental post-rock acts like Black Midi and Swans. “This album encompasses a lot of our inspirations,” says Oppenheimer. “It also shows what we’re like as a trio, collectively.”
The project reveals the band levelling up as musicians and composers. Recorded in early 2024 in Asheville, North Carolina, the band played all the instruments on Emita Ox and produced it alongside Alex Farrar (Indigo De Souza, Wednesday, Snail Mail). The members’ contributions to the songwriting and production bleed into each other, but the album is a showcase of their individual strengths: Straight’s ethereal vocal melodies and gritty guitar riffs, Wave’s emotive vocals and knotty drum patterns, and Oppenheimer’s diabolical basslines and experimentation with electronic production. “We map out all the sections beforehand, we like to write intricate parts that complement each other,” says Wave.
Featuring songs that span from 2018 to 2023, Emita Ox is also a document of Hello Mary’s past five years together growing up as bandmates and their arrival into young adulthood. First meeting as teenagers in 2019, the band became fast friends through the pandemic—a global crisis that made coming of age feel even more weighty and complicated. “This album represents a period of time that’s very meaningful to us. The songs are related to things that we all know about, even if it’s not out on the table for everyone else,” Wave explains. “The songwriting and recording process was a very heavy time that I will never forget.” Even if the lyrics touch on serious topics, the band maintains a core sense of play and exploration: jamming is their way of working through these feelings in a way that’s “easy and fun,” Straight says.
Created amid these emotions of frustration and camaraderie, Emita Ox sees Hello Mary ruthlessly diving into a thrilling sound of catharsis. On “0%,” Wave launches into piercing screams for the first time. Oppenheimer says that her bandmate’s intense shrieks “makes the song full of energy and really exciting to play,” especially in the song’s breakdown which ends in a cacophony of noise and vibraphone. Meanwhile, “Down My Life,” which Straight says she wrote after “one of the saddest experiences” of her life, features her angelic vowels on top of warped piano and menacing bass. The band even veers towards prog-rock on songs like “Footstep Misstep,” where complex instrumentation and Wave’s dynamic vocals evoke a world in between fantasy and nightmare.
The LP’s title, Emita Ox, is referenced in “Three,” whose lyrics sound plucked from a fairy tale. “‘Three’ was written after I’d been in a creative rut that lasted a couple months,” says Straight. “I wasn’t focused on getting any message across. My intention was just to write a full song, whether I ended up liking it or not.” Though it doesn’t have an intended meaning, the imagery of the girl Emita and her ox is fitting for the band: Oxes are strong and resilient, and much of Emita Ox’s subject matter reveals Hello Mary’s perseverance, as they choose to move through life’s burdens instead of getting beaten down by them. But oxes are also dependable—much like how they see each other and their relationship. “There’s the lyric that goes, ‘Woke to the hands of three/Stitching and fixing me,’” Wave says to Straight, quoting her own words back to her. “I always picture me and Mikaela with you.” It’s a testament to how they’ve witnessed each other’s heartaches and mended each other back up—through their music and their friendship.
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