On the heels of her successful performances at SXSW, Coachella and second US tour opening for Ben Folds in April and May, for which she received standing ovations and rave reviews for her operatic pop vocal flair, platinum-selling Australian singer/songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke embarks on her first headlining club tour in the US in mid-June. She will also be performing at the legendary Lilith Fair in select cities in late June/early July.

Selected by NBC.com as one of the "10 Bands Not To Miss At SXSW" and receiving high praise from The New York Times’ Jon Pareles for her festival-opening performance at Coachella (“Kate Miller-Heidke, an Australian songwriter who can be tenderly folky or sly and wry, has a warm voice with a secret extension: a high, operatic flutter, that had the crowd whooping every time she unleashed it. She used it sparingly, and every time was a zinger.”), Kate returns to the States to support her US debut album Curiouser, which was released on March 16th on SonyMusic Independent Network(SIN)/Sony Australia.

London-based Miller-Heidke is well known in her native Australia for her innovative, occasionally-operatic, sci-fi pop music. In addition to earning rave reviews from the media for Curiouser, which is nearing double platinum in Australia, she continues to build an ever-growing hoard of devotees worldwide thanks to her viral hit (and fan favorite), “Are You F**king Kidding Me? (The Facebook Song)”, which has had the Twitterati buzzing from its initial debut.

The first single in the US from Curiouser, “Caught In The Crowd”, addresses the serious subject of teenage bullying based on a recognizably real story of lingering childhood regret. "CITC" was honored recently when it was selected by NPR as their "Song of the Day".

With this song, Kate and her collaborator/husband Keir Nuttall made history as the first Australians to win the Grand Prize in the prestigious International Songwriting Competition (based in Nashville). The song was handpicked from more than 17,000 entries to woo judges including Tom Waits, The Shins’ James Mercer, The Cure’s Robert Smith, Neil Finn and The Kinks’ Ray Davis.

Listen: Kate Miller-Heidke on NPR's Mountain Stage

Josh Mease, originally from Houston, Texas, lives in Brooklyn, where he can often be found exploring the abandoned corners of the city, finding peaceful solace in cemeteries, empty swimming pools, and abandoned waterfronts. His debut LP, Wilderness, is the result of these wanderings. It was patched together from various recording sessions in Texas, Connecticut and most notably the closet of his Brooklyn apartment, where neighbors’ loud parties, clanking pipes, and the sound of traffic on the BQE were par for the course. But even amidst the constant noise and distraction just outside his window, Josh Mease has found a space inside his music to daydream. He’s found a safe haven in his own imagination, and luckily Wilderness takes us all there with him.




Besides a trip down to Denton, Texas with bandmates Bill Campbell and Alan Hampton to pitch in basic drums and bass, Mease also took a trip to New Haven for a few weekends to record in a top floor (and possibly haunted) attic studio. Besides this out of town tracking, the songs “Days Like This,” “Neon Ghosts,” “Eleanor,” and “White Diamonds” were all bedroom recordings top to bottom. The result is layer after layer of quiet yet lush and poignant melodies that really make Wilderness the gem that it is.




Wilderness is a testament to Josh’s mind for fantasies. Each song evokes a scene from an imaginary world. The album takes us from the front porch summer swing sing-along “Days Like This” to the day-glo world of “White Diamonds” and ends with the ambient and beautifully strange “Tall Trees.” Mease also shows a talent for love songs. “I See You,” a duet featuring Jess Martins (Via Audio), is a lovely campfire stargazer about finding your other half – and “Eleanor” evokes silent movie imagery from the past. The topics of each song are diverse, but the theme remains that world of Mease’s mind where the music and listener are safe from the daily hustle.