Maya Hawke has announced her new album, Chaos Angel, due on May 31st. Today, she shared the record’s lead single, “Missing Out.”
Arriving via Mom+Pop, Chaos Angel is Hawke’s third album, following her 2022 release, Moss. Featuring production helmed by longtime collaborator Christian Lee Hutson — with contributions from Benjamin Lazar Davis and Will Graefe — the album is “about falling in love, fucking it up, and getting back up again,” according to its press release.
Speaking about the themes on Chaos Angel, Hawke explained that she imagined a figure dubbed the “chaos angel,” who’s been told that she is “a god of love,” but comes to find that she’s only been creating chaos and destruction. As Hawke puts it: “On the journey home, she goes back through all the places she thought she destroyed, and in the rubble, wonder and beauty and magic grew.”
The first single from the album, “Missing Out,” speaks to Hawke’s highly-personal approach to songwriting, inspired by a specific moment in her past when she was living near her brother’s college campus and imagined what a normal collegiate experience would’ve been like.
“There was actually a girl who went to Brown, where my brother goes to college, and we were all going around saying what our wish was for ourselves,” Hawke explained in a statement. “She said, ‘I want to write the next great American novel.’ It was the moment where I felt older than everyone because I laughed so hard. I was like, ‘You are so far down the wrong track!’ Wish to write a novel. That would be a miracle. Don’t wish to write the next great American novel, that’s a nightmare! It made me feel I actually am a different place in my life than these people I was around. It totally inspired this whole song.”
“Missing Out” arrives with a sci-fi inspired music video directed by Alex Ross Perry. Watch it below. Pre-orders for Chaos Angel are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Hawke’s Hollywood career is as busy as ever. She’s voices the role of Anxiety in the upcoming Inside Out sequel, and she stars in her father Ethan Hawke’s new film, Wildcat, which is scheduled for release later this year. And of course she’ll appear in the final season of Stranger Things, which is currently shooting in Atlanta, with a targeted release date of early 2025.
Chaos Angel Artwork:
Chaos Angel Tracklist:
01. Black Ice
02. Dark
03. Missing Out
04. Wrong Again
05. You’re Okay
06. Better
07. Big Idea
08. Hang In There
09. Promise
10. Chaos Angel