Maui-born, LA-based singer-songwriter Katie Iannitello has totally bewitched us with her music outlet Beauty Queen and you probably have noticed it. But let’s be honest, it was nearly impossible to resist her left-field pop banger “Goner“, the super-catchy hooks of “The Only One” and the hazy daydream that was her last single “Sold You Out“. Today, Beauty Queen finally unveils her Henry Nowhere-produced EP, Out Of Touch, alongside a video for its title track.

For her first visuals ever, Iannitello seems to promote a leisure resort. Beach, relaxing bath, roller and tennis… We all have tons of memories about our summer holidays and the video definitely fits the nostalgic aura of her dream pop new track. And between all these activities that she executes with nonchalance, Beauty Queen has even some spare time to hit us with her femme fatale gaze. Watch below.

[su_youtube_advanced url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYpbBiB5tx4″]

You might have noticed that we here at HighClouds have been a bit enamored with Beauty Queen this year. As of this article, 2019 has seen us average about one Beauty Queen post per month — first premiering her debut single “Goner” in January, then Thunderclapping second single “The Only One,” and now interviewing her about her upcoming project. Today we’re treated to the latest taste of her forthcoming Out of Touch EP, out April 19 on Sleep Well Records. The new track is called “Sold You Out,” and it’s another lovely, hazy daydream of a tune that will have you swaying your head and humming the melody into the evening.

We recently had the chance to chat with Maui-born, LA-based Katie Iannitello – the delightful, genuine, humble, and multi-talented songwriter behind the Beauty Queen moniker – about everything from wedding singing to hotel pastries. Check her brand new single and read some of our interview below.

HighClouds: Let’s start by talking about the name of your project. It’s an awesome band name and we’d love to hear more about how you came up with it.

Katie: I was playing Cha Cha in Grease the musical, and I was very into the 50s glam kind of thing, and there’s also the “Beauty School Dropout” dance. With Beauty Queen, the music first started out being kind of surf-rocky and more in that 50s world. Now it’s gotten more contemporary, but the name still sticks. And women are beautiful!

Agreed. Women are beautiful and should definitely be running the world. Since we’re talking about your older style, did the first couple songs on your Bandcamp page come from the influence of being in Grease and you’ve since gotten interested in other things? Or is that how you foresee your project — being something where you can change the style up as you want to?

My goal is to release a bunch of different things that have different vibes, so I’m working on how to do that but still have it all tie into the music. I don’t want every release to be insanely different cause then it’s hard for people to figure out who I am. At the time I was really influenced by the Shangri-Las and other girl groups. “Blue Bayou” was the first song I ever wrote, so to start off with that piano-plinky, doo-wop thing was an easier way to navigate the songwriting world. Also, I started my project with a boy that was from a different band, and his style of recording had more of a grungey vibe, and I realized I wanted to take the project on a more pop route. So I moved to LA and started working with Henry [Henry Nowhere of Day Wave] who produced the new EP.

How did you get hooked up with Henry Nowhere?

When I was living in Oakland, I was playing a lot of jazz and singing at a bunch of little jazz clubs. I met a really good friend of mine — he’s a guitar player — and I was telling him that I had a pop group, and he said, “My friend Henry used to play jazz, but now he’s in LA doing pop.” So he gave me Henry‘s phone number, and I said, “I have these songs, do you want to listen to them?” Then he asked if he could produce them, and he did, and he’s so incredible at everything music.

So it was when you moved to the Bay Area that you started writing songs?

Yeah, I moved to San Francisco with no direction and worked for some theaters [doing set design work]. I grew up playing classical piano, but there aren’t a lot of shows on Maui. My first concert was when I was 18, and it was Journey! But in San Francisco, the local music scene is so easy to attend. So I just reached out to this band and was like, “Hello! I just moved here! I tried to write a song! Do you wanna get together?” Little did I know then what an insane, weird Facebook message that would be to receive. [Laughs.] I was just kinda going for it! And that’s how I started the band.

You’ve got experience in a lot of different music styles: jazz, musical theater, classical, pop from many eras. Do you still do much with those other genres? I read somewhere that you taught piano and sang at weddings — do you still do much of that?

I gave up the wedding singing. Maybe one day I’ll do it again, but I was kind of catapulted into a world that I didn’t really want to commit to. Jazz, sometimes I’ll go to sessions down here and sit in and will sing. I’d like to pursue jazz for regular gigs. And my friend and I started a country band, but the older, more jazzy country songs like Hank Williams, Anita Carter, and Patsy Cline kind of stuff. We’re just covering them and hopefully will start doing some gigs cause I love that kind of music as well.

It’s funny you should mention the country band cause I’ve definitely noticed kind of a country influence, especially in your vocal style. So I’m curious — what are some of your absolute music obsessions? Artists or bands where you’re in it for the long haul with them.

Well, a lot of the bands that are my favorites are older, so I don’t know if you want to hear about them. [Laughs.] But, Bobby Caldwell is really great. He’s real cool. Michael Rault, he’s newer. He’s great cause he has an old school influence, but his music is a cool mix between the really groovy stuff with the more monotone singing that the hip people do nowadays, you know? And then my all-time favorite man, who’s no longer with us unfortunately, is Gene Pitney and I love him. Let’s see… have you heard of Hatchie? She’s so cool! I love how some of it is so 2000s!

Can you describe your songwriting and recording process?

It’s a very disorganized process. [Laughs.] I usually just hum things in my head and then record them on voice memos. There’ll be millions of these 10-second clips that I totally forget how they go together and what I was thinking when I thought of them. Once I do enough of those and I get frustrated, then I go into Logic and usually put on a terrible drum machine loop just so there’s something moving it forward. And then I’ll play on my keyboard, electric piano, just very basic. And then I’ll mostly feature the vocals on the track. Sometimes I improvise over the weird little backing tracks that I made — that’s how I think of a lot of lyrics. I’ll just mumble stuff and I’ll be like, “That sounds like that word! Oh, that would be a cool concept!”

So you don’t start with a story or concept or even a feeling – you’ll let the improvisation of the vocals dictate certain words, which then dictates the ultimate story or song?

Yeah! And what’s weird about that is, I’ll listen to it later on and think, “Whoa, that totally describes this one situation I was in that I felt strongly about.” My subconscious, you know?

What would you say was the biggest challenge for you in making the EP?

Finding a production style and someone to work with in that realm that I thought would do justice to the songs. And then I guess even harder than that would be after the fact, where you have this thing that you think is pretty cool and you’re like, “Now what?” You’re just sitting in this room by yourself with this thing and it’s like, “Okay. That’s all. I guess I just have it now, and no one will ever hear it.” [Laughs.]

And what surprised you the most? Did you find that you learned anything about yourself through the journey of making this music?

I think I don’t give myself enough credit for musicianship, and being in the loop with the people that are producing it. At first my confidence was really low, but then I realized that I could be a helpful part of the conversation and work together to arrange the songs. So I learned that I’m slightly more of a competent musician than I had previously thought. But I’m still working on that. [Laughs.] It’s very hard.

I’ll be working on that forever. Correct me if I’m wrong, but we do hear a dog barking in “The Only One,” right?

That’s Henry‘s dog, Penny. We recorded the EP in Henry and his girlfriend’s bedroom. It was all recorded in a bedroom. It sounds pretty good for a bedroom. [Laughs.] Except for the dog bark, but we kept that in cause it’s pretty cute.

Any tour plans?

I’m trying to do something in July where we go all the way to Vancouver. So that would be fun. I’m working on that right now. And then I’m trying to tour with some other bands, hopping on a couple as an opening act.

One last question. You have an amazing Instagram page, and I just have to know what the story is behind the La Quinta cake.

La Quinta cake! My dad was staying at La Quinta, and we went downstairs and I ate some of their cake. [Laughs.]

They just had a cake that they made with their logo on it?!

Isn’t that slightly upsetting? [Laughs.] But it’s pretty funny. I like it. I feel like all my pictures are very telling that I’m basically an old woman. [Laughs.]

Not very much is known about Beauty Queen – the bedroom-pop project from Bay Area-raised, Los Angeles-based Katie Iannitello – but we suspect that’s soon about to change. After initially releasing a pair of raw garage-rock doo-wop songs on her Bandcamp page, Beauty Queen seems to have undergone a bit of a reinvention. She abandoned her old sound, hooked up with producer Henry Nowhere (from the wonderful Day Wave), and began crafting hazy yet indelible, 80s-inspired jams. When her previous single “Goner” was released a couple months ago, we referred to it as a “hypothetical Kate Bush-fronts-Mr Twin Sister scenario that has been brought to reality,” and the same holds true with glorious new track, “The Only One.”

On the surface, it’s a pretty straightforward tune. Iannitello wastes no time getting things going: her isolated vocals kick off the song, which are then immediately joined by a steady beat, dreamy guitars, and a driving bass line. Dig a little deeper, however, and there’s plenty to latch onto. The simple melodies of the verses and chorus pull off a nifty trick by providing super-catchy hooks while simultaneously managing to surprise the listener. Take the first verse, for example:

[su_quote]’Am I the only thinking that I, I’d rather stay in the car?

Cause if I left right now, don’t think that I’d make it too far.

Am I the only one thinking that I, I was addicted to start?

Somebody say no, somebody say no.'[/su_quote]

The inflection at the end of the first line goes up the scale, leading us to expect the same at the end of the second line, but instead the opposite happens. The third line is familiar melody again, but then the fourth takes a completely different turn. Also, check out the rhythmic peculiarities that abound – the staccato of “thinking,” the repetition of “I,” the pauses in “left. right. now.” This is taken even further in the pre-chorus, “Oh I could deny we could get by, but…” She bends “but” for so long, it elongates a very short word into something one typically reserves for country music. And yet, by the time her harmonies enter the mix in the chorus, one could be forgiven for mistaking this for a new Pure Bathing Culture track.

It’s no wonder that Sleep Well Records (run by Alyse Vellturo aka the awesome pronoun) has taken an interest in Beauty Queen, and it’s just a matter of time before many others do as well. In the meantime, look very much forward to the Out of Touch, and bonus points for catching the dog barking during the breakdown groove of the track’s back half.

We’re starting out the new year with an exciting premiere by a debuting artist. “Goner” is the debut single by Oakland-based artist Beauty Queen, the brainchild of Katie Iannitello. An impressive pop banger with left-field inclinations, “Goner” relies on dream pop instrumentation, reverb and hazy guitars galore. However, the melody and the vocals are as straightforward as it gets, sitting comfortably in the centre of the mix instead of being buried under a plethora of instruments. “Goner” is hardly something that would fit in seamlessly in the charts today, but it wouldn’t have been entirely out of place thirty years ago. It’s a laid-back and bedroom-poppy take on 80s alternative pop, an hypothetical Kate Bush-fronts-Mr Twin Sister scenario that has been brought to reality.

Opening with an immediately memorable guitar riff, the whole thing is just hook after hook after hook, all encapsulated in a three-minute-and-a-half pill that begs to be taken again and again. On top of it all sits the song’s majestic chorus, which peaks in its very first line with Beauty Queen hitting that high note on “I guess I’m a goner”. Reinforced with her own backing vocals and smooth guitar licks, the entire chorus is the cherry on top of this impressive debut track, produced by no one else than Henry Nowhere of Day Wave. Tune in below.

Hailing from sunny California, Henry Moser aka Henry Nowhere deepened his lo-fi guitar pop while touring with Day Wave. On his new track “Problems of the Heart”, an instant indie pop tune with a nostalgic and Indian summer filter, the Los Angeles-based heartbroken guitarist gets out of his studio-bedroom and goes to the doctor to give his version of the so classic break-up song. With the sampling an old cassette player, the track spreads a gentle retro vibe which sticks to the timelessness of the topic. As the artist stated, “The theme of looking for a quick fix for a deep pain is even more relevant today than it was 80 years ago.” Tune in below.