Mississippi’s MSPAINT have announced No Separation, a new EP set for release on May 23rd through Convulse Records. Alongside the announcement, the band shared the lead single “Angel” and its music video, directed by Thorne Hood. Preorders for No Separation are available now.
Recorded and co-produced by Julian Cashwann Pratt and Harlan Steel of Show Me The Body, along with MSPAINT’s own Nick Panella, No Separation builds further on the group’s distinctive sound—one that eschews guitars entirely, leaning instead on distorted bass, constantly evolving synth textures, and heavy drumming, all led by vocalist Deedee’s commanding presence.
Following the release of their debut Post-American in 2023, MSPAINT toured heavily, sharing stages with a wide range of bands from Soul Glo and Twitching Tongues to Beach Fossils and Spirit of the Beehive. Bassist Randy Riley noted the diverse audience reactions: “A lot of those tours were with wildly different bands. There’d be shows with really heavy bands like Twitching Tongues or Soul Glo, and then way over on the other side bands like Turnover or Beach Fossils. A lot of times we’d be surprised at how much all these different audiences embraced us.”
Touring also shaped the development of the new material. “We’d play a lot of these new songs live and I think that helped sort of contextualize what other people hear,” said Deedee. “We’re always trying to refine what we do. We see it as our normal thing, but playing live helps you to understand what other people are absorbing as poppy or heavy or whatever.”
No Separation reflects this ongoing evolution. It pushes MSPAINT’s sound to new extremes—offering some of their most aggressive and at the same time melodic work. The recording process was intense, with Panella deeply involved in demoing the tracks. “Nick really lived in the DAW this time, he became a soldier of the DAW,” Deedee remarked. The band worked relentlessly between computer-based demos and live sessions, sharpening the songs over hundreds of hours.
The connection among the members is central to the band’s creative approach. Panella explained, “Most of our music is genuinely inspired by our relationships to each other. We bring together disparate musical philosophies and try to marry them and create our own community that can accept those differences and actually thrive as a result of them. Originality ultimately isn’t about creating something new as much as it’s about navigating your own inner world and the inner world’s of those directly around you until you’ve learned something that hasn’t been learned before.”
Meeting Julian Cashwann Pratt and Harlan Steel during a tour stop in Los Angeles led to a deeper collaboration for the EP. Riley recalled, “We went to visit this spooky studio where they were doing a ‘writing camp.’ We didn’t even know what that was—ain’t nobody in Hattiesburg doing a writing camp. But it ended up being this really strange and cool experience, and we showed Julian and Harlan some of what we were working on. Julian hit the ground running and started offering feedback right away.”
Opener “Drift” immediately shows MSPAINT’s sharpened focus, with distorted basslines and tight drum work driving a slow build into chaos. Lyrically, Deedee addresses the growing visibility of homelessness in American cities. “When you do a lot of traveling you start seeing things that you don’t see everywhere else,” they said. “We saw a lot of houseless people, we’d go to some cities and just the volume of people on the street is pretty wild to witness. People don’t realize they’re one fiscal misstep or hospital emergency or whatever away from being that.”
Following tracks “Wildfire” and “Surveillance” continue to explore societal disintegration, with the former featuring arpeggiated synth runs and urgent rhythms, while the latter descends into dense, noise-punk chaos. Environmental collapse and manmade disasters are central lyrical themes. “We’re just seeing some really unnatural things—things that we’re doing, they’re not just happening, we’re the cause,” Deedee said.
On the title track “No Separation,” Deedee ties together inner emotional life and external destruction, singing, “I can feel it now, no separation from what I feel and how.” They described the song as “sort of about how we’re connected to each other, and to the world, and to its disasters. It’s about how at the end of the day the world’s been sold out from under us before we can even have our say, but we’re not powerless to fight against it–there’s hopefulness in no separation.”
The EP closes with “Angel,” described as one of MSPAINT’s most striking tracks yet.
Built around a haunting, melodic synth line, the song grows into a wall of sound while Deedee proclaims, “there is no control, just controlling yourself.” Reflecting on the track’s more accessible qualities, Deedee said, “It’s definitely different from the way I would usually write for the band. It’s something you can sing along to, but it’s also something that maybe you’re saying to yourself that feels good—some positive thinking. I felt like we succeeded at bringing poppier elements into our space and making them our own instead of trying to bring what we do into a pop space.”
No Separation stands as a direct, unflinching reflection of MSPAINT’s growth and their increasingly sharpened view of the world around them.
