Mitski returns as the god of her art with ‘Where’s My Phone?,’ the caustic lead to her new album. The song precedes her eighth studio release, Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, due 27 February, 2026.
The latest single’s resolute drums and guitars, that chug along before fuzzing out gloriously, invoke the sounds of 2014’s Bury Me at Makeout Creek and 2016’s Puberty 2; this may seem surprising to those familiar with Mitski’s career-long habit of exploring sonic genres over the course of two records. The expectation laid out by 2023’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We was of folk stylings with flourishes of country and an emphasis on orchestration. Thus, the extravagant callback to a quintessential Mitski-rock sound comes as a welcome surprise, especially to those to whom it served introduction.
Despite the instrumental’s resistance of the descriptor, the song’s structure and tune carry a decisively pop quality. The former is a noisier, less decisive version of the baroque pop of Fiona Apple’s When The Pawn…. However, the song manages to pack in many classic Mitski-isms, with wordless choruses of “pa-pa-pa” as well as biting lyrics that harken attention to many constants in her writing: the amorphous night sky, intimacy to suppress insidious urges, hopelessness at the notion of a saviour or someone to relieve the claustrophobia of existence within the self; “I just want my mind to be a clear glass,” Mitski’s speaker says.
This song brings back the potency of a Mitski lead single, especially after the softer ‘Bug Like an Angel’ from 2023’s The Land. Keeping with the sonic tradition of the latter, the new album and song are said to feature live instrumentation and ensemble arrangements. Whilst, ‘Where’s My Phone?’ may not be the most novel addition to Mitski’s discography, it is still a riveting introduction to what will hopefully prove an expansive sonic exploration on the forthcoming record.
“Mitski (45690628311) (cropped)” by David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.