It's been 25 years since Mirah first emerged from a flourishing Pacific Northwest indie scene to release her debut LP You Think It's Like This but Really It's Like This. Co-produced by Phil Elverum, on whose early Microphones records Mirah was regularly featured, the album immediately established Mirah as a generational songwriting talent. The album's influence has echoed down to the present day, "shaping the aesthetic of bedroom pop" (NPR), and impacting the output of two generations of indie musicians, as evidenced by the expanded reissue of the album released by Double Double Whammy in 2020, which featured covers of the album's songs from artists like Flock of Dimes, Allison Crutchfield, Hand Habits, Palehound, Mal Blum, and WHY?.
Mirah has remained a beloved and idiosyncratic voice through indie rock's many permutations. Her abundant collaborators include Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, Thao Nguyen, and Greg Saunier of Deerhoof, and she has released 6 full length EPs, most recently 2018's Understanding.
In October, Mirah returned to release her first single in 7 years, a track called "Catch My Breath," and today she is announcing her 7th album Dedication, which will be released on Double Double Whammy and Mirah's long-running imprint Absolute Magnitude on February 20th. To mark the announce Mirah is sharing a new track entitled "After The Rain."
Mirah says of the track: "Turns out that I am the kind of person who can get almost nothing work-like done within the frame of a normal work-day but give me a week and I will write a whole album. I was staying at a friend’s house in San Gabriel, Los Angeles County and this song just flew out of me. It wouldn’t have flown out in between school drop off and school pick up, with a bunch of errands and e-mails to deal with in between. This song needed the mountains in the distance, the weird suburban quiet of the days, the familiar strangeness of sleeping in not my own bed, the not my life life. I find a lot of truth in times like that, when I am just listening to me. What a gift."
A physical release of the album is forthcoming.