Mazie Is Taking Psychedelia to New Queer Heights

Psychedelia is getting a little queerer.

Most fans are probably familiar with singer mazie for her viral hit “dumb dumb,” which garnered over 60 million streams on TikTok. But the queer Los Angeles (via Baltimore) based artist can do so much more.

With her two latest singles, “girls just wanna have sex” and “it’s not me (it’s u),” the artist explores different aspects of psychedelia, a genre she wants to make more accessible for people like her. Once her album blotter baby comes out on February 24, everyone will see just how accessible the genre can be.

“I'm obsessed with this album,” mazie says. “I've genuinely never been just outwardly proud of something that I've made. I'm always critical of my work all the time. I'm not of this. I just can't wait for it to be out.”

“I am really trying to redefine modern psychedelia in music,” she continues. “And so we just tried to draw from classic influences and then modernize it. And there are just so many different forms of psychedelic music. So we just kind of tried to dabble in as much as we could, and that's what we got.”

One area she dabbled in was aggressive, raunchy, and in-your-face bratty pop-punk on the song “girls just wanna have sex.” Her confidence about the album and her new sound is nowhere more evident than when she’s confidently singing about getting eaten out on her friend’s parent’s couch. She says the song is meant to show how casual and fun being queer can be.

“I was just really feeling my queerness as of late and just wanting to be very expressive of that. So I had just not really had a moment to just sit in the studio and bring that into the music,” she says. “I feel like the statement itself is that it can just be rowdy because being rowdy is fun, and having great gay sex is just f*cking fun. You know what I mean?”

mazie - girls just wanna have sex (trippy fairy edit)youtu.be

On “it’s not me (it’s u),” she shifts gears, going for a softer side, but still one rooted in her real-life relationships. She says the song is her most honest to date, and exposes herself during a time of growth and “just me being pretty hypocritical and cruel.”

“I think it's a lot of tongue and cheek of ‘if it's not me, it's you,’ and just feeling like I’m making excuses for bad behavior. So it was really intense,” she says of releasing the song. “It was the hardest song I've ever written just because it was so honest. I feel like I haven't pulled from such direct experiences that I had in the way that I did in that song. So it was brutal.”

mazie - it's not me (it's u) (official visualizer)youtu.be

But those songs are just two of the wide variety of sounds on her new album, which comes out February 24. She said she wants blotter baby to really stick with people, and to be an album they can explore over and over again.

“I think when approaching the album, I feel like it's going to take a couple listens to really saturate, which is one of my favorite parts of my favorite records,” she says. “And there's just a lot to dig into throughout the whole thing. So I just hope people can take their time with it and consume it as thoughtfully as they have the time to do in their life.”

Mazie also wants to remind her fans of the power of mutual aid, something she says she tries to bring up in every interview she does.

“It's extremely easy to participate in your community. And it's so much more one-on-one to community members,” she says. “And it's so easy to Google your city Mutual Aid. There’s easy Cash app, Venmo, Zelle accessibility. If you can't go volunteer, you can definitely just send the remainder of your Venmo balance and it's really easy.”