Mannequin Pussy Announces New EP Perfect for May 2021 Release and Smashes It All Up in New Video for “Control”

Mannequin Pussy has announced they will release a new EP, titled Perfect, on May 21. Along with the EP’s announcement, the group has shared their forthcoming EP’s first single, “Control” and an accompanying, self-directed music video.

Featuring frontwoman Marisa “Missy” Dabice laying in a bed, the music video for “Control” features Dabice tearing apart a bedroom set that sits in the middle of a field. She sings a bat around, lighting the bed on fire and tearing apart the pillows, feathers flying in the air.

“We just figured if we forced ourselves into this situation where someone could hit ‘record,’ something might come out of it,” Dabice said in a press release. “We’d never written that way before.”

The track begins with a relatively simple guitar tune, Dabice’s vocals dancing over the track in a slight whisper as she stretches her arms and prepares to wake up in the morning. The track picks up speed as she sings, “I’ve come undone/I sliced it how I’d rather feel the hurt/Separated/Thanks for watching me pleading.” The track focuses on the struggle of holding onto one’s sanity during the pandemic, Dabice beginning the track by saying “I’m in control/That’s what I tell myself/When all the walls around me close in.”

According to a press statement, the pandemic had hit just as the band had finally begun to transition to music full-time after a decade of playing. “For a while, it seemed like maybe the lull would be temporary, a brief pause before things could resume as they were,” the press release said. “And then the numbers ballooned, and the months stretched on, and memories of rooms packed with strangers started to feel alien, dangerous even in imagination.”

The band rejoined together in the studio, choosing to record in-person. During the studio sessions, they wrote new material as they went along, finding inspiration from the pandemic and finally managing to spend time in a studio space again.

The upcoming EP follows the band’s 2019 album, Patience. The album had been critically acclaimed across the board, achieving praise from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Flood and more. The band’s guitarist, Thanasi Paul, recently departed the band, leaving Mannequin Pussy as a three-piece with Dabice, Colins “Bear” Regisford and Kaleen Reading.

Perfect tracklist:

1. “Control”
2. “Perfect”
3. “To Lose You”
4. “Pigs is Pigs”
5. “Darling”