Mxmtoon, Social Media's Savviest Indie-Pop Singer, Is Ready For A Nap

By Sam Manzella


Mxmtoon’s Maia is one of the busiest young females in the indie-pop world, nevertheless you wouldn’t know it from a cursory glance at her space. Zooming in for a video call with MTV News from her apartment in Brooklyn, the 20-year-old social media star-turned-pro singer-songwriter readily accepts compliments of her lush surroundings. Cascading houseplants and small trinkets adorn the white shelves on the wall in back of her. “I’m an introvert,” she says, “so I'm fine with just hanging out in my room, taking care of my plants.”


The serene setup is a stark contrast to Maia’s jam-packed schedule: She dropped her second EP of 2020, Dusk, on October 1, far less than per year right after releasing 2019’s Masquerade, her first full-length studio album. She’s been churning out day-to-day 10- to 15-minute episodes of her history-themed podcast, 365 Days With Mxmtoon, since September 14. Twitter, Instagram, Twitch — you name it, Maia uses it, and the digital native’s 4 million combined followers are a captive audience.


Maia (who goes by her first name to have a semblance of privacy in the digital age) describes Dusk because the “sad however beautiful” companion piece to April’s Dawn EP. She wrestles deftly with feelings of loneliness and depression, pairing ukulele and piano instrumentals — both nods to her internet origins as a teen uploading ukulele tutorials to YouTube — with the diaristic lyrics her young fans have come to know and love. “I just wanted to create something that felt like I could progress as an artist however not leave in back of my roots,” she says.


Dusk is also an ode to introversion in the age of COVID-19. It could sound counterintuitive while quarantining or social distancing, although for Maia, alone time is a pillar of her self-care routine. “I think the more comfortable we can be in our own corporation, the easier it is for us to recharge and face the world head-on again,” she says. Most of Dusk was written pre-pandemic, including the cello-laden “Asking for a Friend,” Maia’s personalized fave off the new EP. Other tracks like “Show and Tell,” a wistful piano ballad, are unmistakably the product of quarantine (“Waking up each morning / And I'm gazing outdoors of my windowsill / The world is so wrong, I hope that we're strong / Although I'm still mourning”).


However being alone doesn’t necessarily mean being lonely. Dusk also features "OK on Your Own," a teamwork with none other than Carly Rae Jepsen. “[Carly and I] Facetimed, and she was like, ‘What do you want me to do on the song?’” Maia remembers. “I was like, ‘You're literally Carly Rae Jepsen. You could do whichever you want and I'll be happy.’ And she was like, ‘OK.’” She points to a shelf that’s slightly out of frame: “I have a little bit note from her up here, and yes it says, To Maia, happy release day. XO. Carly. And I look at it and I'm like, ‘What the fuck?’ I just can't believe it.”


The mellow, ukulele-backed friendship anthem is a point of pride for Maia, who counts CRJ among her personalized pop-music heroes. It also cemented her developments from a YouTuber recording covers and lo-fi originals on GarageBand to a completely fledged recording artist. Maia released and advertised 2018’s Plum Blossom, her first EP, totally independently. By the time her first full-length was in the works, she’d already toured internationally and had a string of viral moments on social media. The world wide web fame scored her 21 Days With Mxmtoon, a podcast with Spotify documenting her creative process while writing and recording Masquerade. It also landed her a publishing deal with Kobalt Music Order, whom she signed to for administrative and creative support last November.


Maia tweeted flippantly that “OK on Your Own” was “for the females and the gays,” however there’s some truth to it. She points to similarities between her and Jepsen’s followings: CRJ has “an insanely large LGBTQ+ population of people who love her and think about her as their queen.” Maia herself is openly bisexual, which resonates deeply with her 411,000-plus followers on Twitter. She came out in 2017 while in the earlier days of her social-media fame. “I don't think I've experienced several obstacles besides the hate comments where people will be like, ‘It's so weird, why is she talking about her sexuality?’” She says. “I think the bedroom-pop space, and indie pop also, has been very open and accepting of queer artists.”


If anything, owning her sexual orientation endeared Maia further to her fans, several of whom are also members of the LGBTQ+ community. “I think that was routinely one of my objectives any time Whenever I began having a platform, to create a space that felt comfortable enough for people to be open about who they are, and for me to be open about who I am too,” she adds. “So I'm thankful I don't need to shy away from this aspect of who I am.”


Maia is leveraging her platform even more ahead of the presidential election in November. On Twitter, she reminds her 411,000 followers to register to vote; on Twitch, she hosts charitable live-streams for a crowd of 97,000. As a bisexual Chinese-American woman place on Earth to an immigrant family member, Maia feels the current administration’s attacks on civil rights personally. “You look at the news, and any time your identity and its validity is constantly being questioned by a guy who's president and everything, it's exhausting,” she says. “It's just terrifying that people's generic human rights are being threatened and have been under fire for so long.”


What’s next for this self-professed perfectionist? 365 Days of Mxmtoon is ongoing through 2021. Maia also plans to continue streaming herself writing songs and playing video games on Twitch, an imperfect although required substitute for connecting with her fans in-person on tour. With Dawn and Dusk out right now, though, Maia has one thing on her mind: “Hopefully I'll get some sleep. That’s my next goal.”