Los Angeles duo Magdalena Bay returns with their new single, ‘Death & Romance’. The track is the band’s first release on Mom+Pop Music. They have also announced The Imaginal Mystery Tour, including dates in North America, Europe and the UK throughout September – November 2024.
‘Death & Romance’ is written and produced by Magdalena Bay and mixed by Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Beach House, MGMT). The track opens with an instant, sugary-sweet hit by way of a danceable piano melody, building into a luminous soundscape of disco, psychedelia and bubblegum pop, laden with Mica’s serene vocals. It feels vibrant and immersive, offering a stirring glimpse of what’s to come from Magdalena Bay.
Magdalena Bay on ‘Death & Romance’: “Imagine rain pouring, streetlights glowing. You sit at home and wait for your alien boyfriend to pick you up in his UFO… but this time, he’s not coming.”
Magdalena Bay is the Los Angeles by way of Miami duo consisting of Mica Tenenbaum (vocals, songwriter) and Matthew Lewin (producer, songwriter). The two first met at an after-school music program in Miami where they grew up, bonding over shared musical influences and eventually starting a prog rock band Tabula Rasa. That band broke up, but when Tenenbaum and Lewin crossed paths again in college, they reconnected with the goal of making something closer to pop music that blends retro and futuristic elements under the moniker Magdalena Bay. “It was like, ‘No one's listening to our prog music, what a shame,’” Mica says with a laugh. “We were excited to try something different. So we got into the mechanics of ‘what does it mean to write a pop song?’ and ‘what is this craft?’ and that was the beginning of Magdalena Bay.”
They released a series of EPs leading up to their critically acclaimed debut album, Mercurial World, in 2021, and went on to sell out their first headlining tour, play numerous festivals around the world – including Coachella in 2023, tour with Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek, Flume and collaborate with Lil Yachty, JIHYO, Blu DeTiger and more.
The music also provides the soundtrack to a kitschy, cerebral digital universe the band has built. Narrated in its own tongue-in-cheek, terminally-online vernacular, the band’s digital space experiments with vaporwave-infused visual art, absurdist livestreams, and DIY music videos, all created by the band themselves. “We love extending the world of our music past sound into videos or a website or graphics or whatever it might be. We’re trying to create an atmosphere or an emotional quality with it… I guess people call it ‘world-building,’” Mica says.
Now, Magdalena Bay prepare to release more new music and play live shows across the globe, with more news coming imminently.
The Imaginal Mystery Tour Dates
North America
3rd Sept – The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA
5th Sept – Wonder Ballroom, Portland, OR
6th Sept – Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, BC
7th Sept – Neptune Theatre, Seattle, WA
10th Sept – Gothic, Denver, CO
12th Sept – The Waiting Room, Omaha, NE
13th Sept – First Avenue, Minneapolis, MN
14th Sept – Thalia Hall, Chicago, IL
17th Sept – Brooklyn Bowl Philly, Philadelphia, PA
18th Sept – Royale, Boston, MA
20th Sept – Brooklyn Steel, New York, NY
21st Sept – 9:30 Club, Washington, DC
22nd Sept – Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro, NC
24th Sept – Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
25th Sept – Brooklyn Bowl, Nashville, TN
27th Sept – Tulips, Fort Worth, TX
28th Sept – Scoot Inn, Austin, TX
1st Oct – Crescent Ballroom, Phoenix, AZ
2nd Oct – The Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, CA
EU/UK
7th Nov – Iceland Airwaves Festival, Reykjavik
9th Nov – Frannz Club, Berlin, DE
11th Nov – Melkweg OZ, Amsterdam, NL
12th Nov – Café de la Danse, Paris, FR
13th Nov – Heaven, London, UK
15th Nov – YES Pink Room, Manchester, UK
16th Nov – Button Factory, Dublin, IE
