“Dead Flowers & Cigarettes”

Like her former OWSLA labelmates, Mija keeps her eyes trained on both the world of mainstream dance-pop and the experimental electronic music that bubbles just beneath it. While many of the tracks she’s released so far indulged EDM tropes like garbled, high-pitched vocal samples and squelchy bass drops, the Los Angeles-based producer has never seemed content to mold her music into a formula. Her latest single, “Dead Flowers & Cigarettes,” sees Mija soften the bigger, brasher facets of her sound. If her older songs were crowd-rousers designed for high-volume DJ sets, her new music feels more suited to isolated headphones listening.

“You’re the saddest girl I know,” Mija whispers at the start of “Dead Flowers & Cigarettes.” Her voice never rises above that volume, and the instrumentation she uses to support it never explodes into a full-blown dance track, though she teases that release with a sinewy synth and a slippery bass tone. There’s a beat, the steady throb of a drum, but it belongs more to the hushed, skeletal world of Burial. Mija speak-sings her way through the track, and the ear-tickling effect of her words feels pulled from Holly Herndon’s quieter moments, as does the complex layering of her voice. Her sibilant delivery takes on the texture of an ASMR YouTube video, but one meant to unsettle rather than soothe. “All the flowers I give you/Are stolen/And dying,” she seethes before introducing a third player to the drama: “He thinks about you/He worries about you/I do not worry about you/I don’t have that right.” Mija’s uneasy instrumentation builds without breaking, suggesting a stifled, tortured kind of love. “Dead Flowers & Cigarettes” doesn’t go for the easy way out. It’s all tension, no release—a bold choice that the promising young producer pulls off.