Miya Folick was spent after her last album, 2023’s ROACH. The album mined the depths of the LA-based artist’s psyche amidst a sea of synths and guitar, each song landing with the weight of a film’s climactic resolution. “Exhaustion,” after such output, was inevitable, so Folick hibernated and recharged her creative energies. But then, “at some point, the ideas just started coming,” Folick tells PAPER.

The result of that ideation is Erotica Veronica (out February 28th via Nettwerk), Folick’s third full-length album and yet another expansive exploration of what makes her tick. On Erotica Veronica, her primary focus is desire and embodiment. The album, which plays out like a psychosexual epic, is sonically rich, overflowing with orchestral flourishes, spiraling song structures and lived-in acoustic textures that render Folick’s clear-eyed lyricism in vivid detail.

In addition to her album announcement, Folick is sharing a new single, “Erotica,” alongside a video directed by Antonio Marziale. It’s a salacious taste of what’s to come on the full project.

“‘Erotica’ is a song about fantasy and pleasure — It’s not just about sex, it’s about a richness of experience, a playfulness, a connection, an open approach to each day,” Folick says. The song moves with a quick pulse and a nervy sense of urgency. It’s ultimately a shirking off of expectations and conventional norms, a move towards a true expression of desire. “I think that we’re fed rules about what an appropriate fantasy looks like, especially when you’re coupled. Our culture is so puritanical in that way. But I think that it’s important for me to retain my autonomy of thought and truthfully sharing my fantasies is an act of tenderness and intimacy,” she says.

In the video, Folick and Marziale unpack these ideas through a surrealist sequence that shows the singer doubled, with one version of her strapped in for medical experimentation and another version observing from behind a one-way mirror. As the video churns on, the cold clinicism of the environment gives way to something more feral and dirty.

PAPER spoke with Folick about her forthcoming album, her dream-like new video and her hopes for this next chapter of her artistry.

I first found your work through your last record, ROACH, which really stunned me. What was your mindset like coming off that record and into Erotica Veronica?

At first my mindset was pretty bleak. I didn’t think I had an album in me. I was just spiritually and physically exhausted, as I think a lot of people were coming out of the pandemic and re-entering the “normal” speed of things. I was searching for that hook, the germ of an idea that would catalyze the rest of my writing process. For a couple of months I just moped around, a bit unmoored and unsure of what I was even interested in. I had the instinct to fuel up, so I ate a lot and slept a lot. And then at some point, the ideas just started coming.

The video for “Erotica” is so cinematic. Tell me about how you came up with the concept and what shooting it was like.

There were so many ideas that were thrown around before we landed on this one. I reached out to Antonio because I’d seen his short film Starfuckers on Mubi and was really blown away. It’s dark and strange and moving and funny all at once. I sent him a quick sketch of an idea, and he sent me back some ideas of his. And then we met up and decided to go in a different direction, one that was a sort of convergence of the ideas that had come before it. But the final form of the video emerged when Antonio and the producer Eli scouted the location. That’s when Antonio pitched me the idea of double.

The parameters that we were working within were fun and absurd, but not carefree. The fun is earned, deliberate, and contains struggle. My character’s awakening does not just “happen” to her. She is the engineer of her own awakening. Sexy, but not necessarily about sex. It’s about eroticism as one’s sensual relationship to the world.

I’m really taken by the orchestral scope of “Erotica”’s production, which mirrors the grand style of the whole record. How did you hone the sound of Erotica Veronica?

A lot of these songs started on acoustic guitar, and I knew that I wanted to retain the raw energy of their gestation in the final production. But I’m also drawn to songs that feel expansive and “cinematic” — by which I mean they contain a sense of drama — so I wanted to have strings and woodwinds and piano across the album. I worked with my co-producer Sam KS to really nail the band performances of all the songs live in the studio, and then we spent a bunch of time just fucking around with the files at home.

Originally, “Erotica” just started at the first verse where the vocal comes in, but I spent four days banging my head against a wall, knowing that it needed something more … almost like a dream sequence reveal to let you know it’s a fantasy. Eventually, that piano part came out of me. I wasn’t technically able to play it very well, so I brought in my friend Jacob Ungerleider to do it justice. I still think that the strings would have maybe sounded a bit better if I was able to afford a string section, but I’m hoping my midi violin has a sort of je ne sais quoi.

For fans who have followed you for a few records now, what do you hope they take away from this next chapter in your artistry?

Oof. That’s a big question. My hope is that they feel about this record the same way I feel about my favorite records — that it’s transportive and challenging. That they can put it on and go for a walk, and the world might feel a little more magical. But also that it brings them closer to truth.

Photography: Jonny Marlow