Miss Grit launches new album “Under My Umbrella” with single “Stranger” on Mute
Miss Grit (Photo by Hoseon Sohn)
New York-based Korean-American musician Miss Grit will release the second full-length album “Under My Umbrella” on 24 April 2026 via Mute. The record follows the 2023 debut album “Follow the Cyborg“, which marked the project’s first full-length release for Mute after earlier self-released EPs.
“Under My Umbrella” focuses on the anxiety, heartbreak and social strain of the past two years. Much of the album was written and recorded in Margaret Sohn’s Queens apartment after an intense period of touring across North America.
Sohn adopted a strict “don’t overthink it” approach during the sessions, keeping first-take guitars and vocals where they captured the right energy. According to Sohn, this process made the album feel closer to everyday reality and closer to what actually emerges when writing without heavy editing.
Table of contents
New Miss Grit single ‘Stranger’ launches the album
The album campaign begins with the new single “Stranger”, which arrives on 27 January 2026. The track is described as Miss Grit’s most ambitious song to date, built around a gritty breakbeat structure and bright, layered synths that eventually push into industrial-pop territory. Lyrically, “Stranger” addresses the attempt to outrun a sense of betrayal while still carrying its weight.
Long-time collaborator Aron Kobayashi Ritch of Momma, who previously remixed material for the “Follow the Cyborg Remixes EP”, steps up as co-producer on “Stranger”. His role extends Miss Grit’s established method of working closely with trusted peers rather than widening the circle of collaborators for its own sake.
On this album, Miss Grit brings in a focused group of friends from New York and Los Angeles. Contributors include electronic composer and film scorer Sae Heum Han (mmph), bassist Margaux Bouchegnies (Margaux), singer Eva Liu (Mui Zyu), producer Luciano Rossi (Mui Zyu), drummer Preston Fulks (Momma) and violinist Zachary Mezzo (Catcher). Their parts sit within Sohn’s core production palette of guitars, synths and detailed sound design, maintaining the project’s balance between electronic and band-driven arrangements.
The album’s writing centres on pulling away from expectations and regaining personal agency. Several songs examine how constant exposure to other people’s emotions and demands can erode a stable identity. Others address the tension of being closely involved with someone while trying not to disappear into that relationship. Throughout, Miss Grit uses direct, plain language rather than abstract concepts, reflecting a conscious move towards more straightforward lyric writing.
Miss Grit “Under My Umbrella” tracklist and formats
“Under My Umbrella” contains nine tracks, combining previously released material with new songs:
- “Tourist Mind”
- “Mind Disaster”
- “Won’t Count On You”
- “It Feels Like”
- “Where Is My Head”
- “Stranger”
- “You Will Change”
- “Overflow”
- “Waste Me”
The album will be released on limited-edition crystal-clear vinyl, CD and digital formats on 24 April 2026. Pre-sale listings are already active at selected retailers under the code CDSTUMM523, confirming the physical editions.
“Tourist Mind”, which appears as the opening track, was released as a standalone digital single via Mute on 20 October 2025 and now serves as an early preview of the album’s sound. The track introduced the combination of trip-hop-leaning atmosphere, maximalist production and dream-pop melody that “Under My Umbrella” develops in full.
Where to watch and stream Miss Grit single “Stranger”
“Stranger” launches the “Miss Grit Under My Umbrella” campaign with both a single and an accompanying video. The promo clip can be viewed on YouTube via the current official upload: Miss Grit “Stranger” – official video.
The single is available on major streaming platforms and through Bandcamp, following the same distribution pattern as “Tourist Mind”, which was issued digitally via Mute with Bandcamp and DSP support.
“Stranger” will sit alongside previous tracks such as “Like You”, “Lain (phone clone)” and “Nothing’s Wrong” in Miss Grit’s live set, connecting the new album cycle to the earlier cyborg-themed material.
Miss Grit live shows around “Under My Umbrella”
To support the release of “Under My Umbrella”, Miss Grit has announced the following headline shows:
- 7 February 2026 – Los Angeles, CA – Banned From Eden
- 24 April 2026 – New York, NY – Nightclub 101 (album release show)
- 2 May 2026 – Los Angeles, CA – Scribble
These dates follow extensive touring in recent years, including support runs with Nation of Language, Bartees Strange and The Last Dinner Party, as well as appearances on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’s LateShowMeMusic series.
About Miss Grit
Miss Grit is the project of Queens-based American electronic musician Margaret Dewey Sohn, who grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan before studying music technology at New York University and adopting the Miss Grit moniker. Early work emerged from New York’s indie and electronic scene, with songs written and recorded between studies and part-time engineering work.
Sohn self-released the debut EP “Talk Talk” in January 2019, a four-track digital release recorded at Virtue and Vice Studios and produced in collaboration with Charles Mueller. The EP introduced a blend of guitar-driven indie rock, synth textures and tightly structured songwriting, and established Miss Grit as part of Brooklyn’s alternative scene. A second EP, “Impostor”, followed in February 2021, again self-released and expanding the project’s production detail while continuing to foreground Sohn’s guitar work.
In 2022, Miss Grit signed to Mute Records. Side-Line covered this step in the article Electronica artist Miss Grit signs to Mute, returns with a new single, introducing the project to its readership as Sohn prepared the first material for the label. That same year, Miss Grit issued the single “Like You”, with Side-Line following the build-up to the debut album through Miss Grit back with title track and video of 2023 album ‘Follow the Cyborg’ and Miss Grit returns with all new single and video, ‘Lain (phone clone)’.
The full-length “Follow the Cyborg” arrived on 24 February 2023 via Mute (STUMM 483), self-produced by Sohn in New York and framed around a cyborg character exploring questions of identity, control and otherness. The album was later expanded with the “Follow the Cyborg Remixes EP” in December 2023, featuring reworks by Aron Kobayashi Ritch, Yaz Lancaster, Phong Tran, Nyokabi Kariũki, torr, Cyber Fairy and Gilla Band’s Alan Duggan-Borges. In June 2024, Miss Grit released “The End (mmph Remix)”, which further highlighted the connection with composer Sae Heum Han.
Alongside this core catalogue, Miss Grit has built a parallel discography of remixes and collaborations. These include a remix of Depeche Mode’s “Ghosts Again”, released as part of a series of alternative versions in 2024, and a remix of Nation of Language’s “Too Much, Enough”, accompanied by an extensive support slot on the band’s 2023 EU, UK and North American dates. In 2025, Side-Line reported on the Dublin project The Null Club’s self-released single “Overgrown” featuring Miss Grit, issued as a limited 12″ and digital release.
On the singles front, Miss Grit continued the post-“Cyborg” period with the digital release “Tourist Mind” in October 2025 on Mute, a track described as channelling trip-hop atmosphere with maximalist electronics and dream-pop elements. Side-Line covered the release in Miss Grit releases new single “Tourist Mind” on Mute (October 20, 2025), positioning it as the first new music since the debut album.
Across these releases, Miss Grit’s work sits at the intersection of electronic music, indie pop and indie rock, with a strong emphasis on self-production and detailed sound design. The forthcoming album “Under My Umbrella” continues that trajectory, shifting from speculative cyborg narratives towards a direct exploration of recent emotional experience, while maintaining the project’s focus on precise, carefully layered arrangements.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil.
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