Mariana de Miguel is laughing. I’ve just compared the seven tracks of her brand new EP, blush, to a box of Baci—the utterly addictive, hazelnut-filled Italian chocolates with little love notes included in the wrapping—and she finds the analogy amusing.
The 28-year-old singer-songwriter known as Girl Ultra connects via Zoom from an outdoor café in her native Mexico City. The songs on blush remind me of Baci, I tell her, because they’re sumptuous and fleeting—inevitably, they leave you pining for more. Was that intentional?
“It absolutely was,” she tells me in Spanish. “I wanted this record to be fun and dynamic, just like those anime openings that make you want to revisit them again after the 30-minute episode is done. I strove for a Pavlovian effect: Look, here are five songs. Let’s see if they urge you to come back looking for more.”
This Machiavellian strategy brought Girl Ultra closer to hyperpop, perhaps more than ever before. From the staccato vocal loops of opening cut “blu”—complete with a faint touch of vinyl crackle—to the serrated drum and bass loop on “5to elemento” and the late night clubby vibe of “rimel,” blush reaffirms the idiosyncratic collage of EDM, pop, chillout, and garage that Girl Ultra had already perfected with the unassuming El Sur, which stood out as one of 2022’s most progressive Latin albums.
“That was like an initial experiment that opened up many doors for me,” she explains. “El Sur allowed me to take that risk, to try out shorter cuts and satisfy the craving to explore the sounds that I’m attracted to. That album was about Mexico City—growing up in a huge urban center of madness, chaos, and noise. But I wanted to keep going; in a way, blush is the son of El Sur.”
One of the strongest cuts on El Sur was the sassy “Bombay,” which used her vocal lines for percussive effect. New tracks like “blu” and the kinetic miniature “lalala”—which brings to mind a 4hero outtake—elevate that approach to a new level of sophistication.
“I began to see my voice as a character, or narrator,” she says. “It can be like an instrument. Sometimes I record little percussive layers using my voice, but they remain buried in the mix. I was in the studio recently with sound engineer Evan Sutton. I’ve been on a minimalist bend since El Sur, and he told me, ‘The harmonic content doesn’t always need to be in your face. Sometimes it can be a feeling.’”
Visually, her music videos and album covers have cultivated a carefully orchestrated persona of glamor and disco decadence—an aesthetic that complements the sensuous soundscapes of blush particularly well.
“After El Sur, I realized that I needed to find my own way of being a beautiful woman,” she says. “And it quickly dawned on me that I didn’t like the feeling of donning a disguise. On the contrary, I need to feel that Girl Ultra is an extension of myself. Girl Ultra has allowed me to explore my sexuality and female power, and on this EP, I let myself go. I found an honest part of myself within the glamor of being a diva. I don’t consider myself to be one, but I can definitely add a brush of that to my music.”
In a previous chat, she had mentioned the impostor syndrome that appears to plague so many talented artists. I ask her if she has made progress on that front.
“My appreciation of love and life has certainly changed,” she says with a smile. “I had forgotten how much fun the process of making music can be, but now it all came back. You can lock me in a studio for three months and I’ll make a new album. But if I don’t like the end result, I can throw it in the trash, and it’s all good.”
For now, she looks forward to presenting the new songs onstage. After performing at Coachella earlier this year—and opening for Julieta Venegas in front of 80,000 people at the Zócalo in Mexico City—she will be supporting Chromeo and the Midnight on a North American tour (a joint album with Chromeo delving into “the darker side of funk” has been in the works for a couple of years). The new shows promise a revamped Girl Ultra sound.
“I’m absolutely obsessed with the specific junction where garage meets club music,” she enthuses. “I toured El Sur as a trio with drum, bass, and myself. The new shows follow the same format, but with more machinery. I’m bringing along a Roland SPD to trigger samples, and we’re going to process the bass so that it sounds like Korn. I’m looking for an aggressive sound, juxtaposed to the softness of my voice. It’s going to be fun and dynamic. I can’t wait for the tour to get started.”