PRE-ORDER: Orders will begin shipping on or around the release date October 23 “She Doesn’t Love Me” listed as “I Love America” on all physical formats Does everything have to feel so heavy all the time? Claud Mintz fights with this question all the time. Not polite little tiffs, either: Big, dragout, existential wars, the kind that might push you to eventually change the tenor of your whole life. The 10 songs on their rich and resplendent third album Me and the Music find the 27-year-old Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter-producer grappling with that question and coming up, triumphantly, with something close to an answer: Things can be heavy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun. Things can be heavy, but that beer in your hand isn’t—why not hold it aloft for a moment, sing along with the friends surrounding you, forget your troubles for the length of a perfect indie-pop song? Me and the Music is Claud’s first album in three years, since 2023’s acclaimed Supermodels, and although it still fits easily into the established universe of Claud’s music, it also represents an emotional 180-turn from what came before. “I was just sick of taking everything so seriously—Supermodels was such a serious record, and I just sulked in feelings for so long,” says Claud. “Such terrible things have happened in this country the last few years, but I’ve only grown closer to the people around me because of that. The world has shown me that the worst can happen, but it might just bring you closer to your community. There’s a difference between being sincere with life and taking life too seriously.” Claud’s first two albums, Supermodels and 2021’s Super Monster, were largely inspired by “this one situationship” that, they realised sometime during the writing of Me and the Music, “really wasn’t ever anything.” Coming to that realization changed everything: On Me and the Music’s title track, they sing that “this is the last song I let you ruin,” and they meant it. Once Claud wrote that song—at the famed Electric Lady Studios with singer-songwriters Hank Heaven and Annie DiRusso—they began to feel totally unburdened, writing 90% of the songs that appear on the album in the year afterwards, and changing lyrics of some songs that they had written previously. “It released a lot of regret that I was carrying with me, and it allowed me to be like… this is so fun,” they say. “Making music is so fun.” Me and the Music’s MO, then, is songs that capture the knottiness of growing up and existing in the world that don’t lose a sense of playfulness or fun. It’s a quintessential slice-of-life record, touching on new romance and inside jokes and Gap commercials and the band America and the place America, and treating all those things with care and consideration. On opener “Gay Witchcraft”—one of the songs that got an overhaul after The Big Epiphany—Claud sings about a new relationship as a feat of both magic and resilience, establishing early on this album’s openness to hard feelings and its fighting spirit. “Around the time I wrote this song, it was when I recognised how deeply important love is in life, especially this particular love,” they say. Its title comes from a book Claud and their friends often joke about, and which suddenly seemed gravely serious in that moment. “I was like, ‘Do I have to crack open Gay Witchcraft to make this work, to make sure this stays in my life? I will go as far as making this joke not a joke.’” Me and the Music was produced by Claud and John Congleton (Alvvays, St. Vincent) and represents a full-circle moment for Claud, who finally felt, with this record, that they were a confident enough producer to assume a co-producer role. They explain that their “last two albums have so many producers on them, but there’s still a throughline,” but they never understood why, until a conversation with their mentor Jack Antonoff, who signed Claud to his publishing venture earlier this year. “He told me, you are a producer,” Claud recalls. “He said ‘Producing is having ideas and curating a sound and telling people what you want,’ and I realised that I’ve been executive producing my last two records.” (Since that conversation, Claud has gone on to produce a string of viral singles by Romy Mars, including “A-Lister.”) Working with Congleton, Claud settled on a sound that’s expansive but grounded—identifiably their own, but with new flourishes that speak to their confidence as a producer. Collaboration is, of course, an essential part of Claud’s work—who are we without our friends? In addition to Claud, they’re one-quarter of Shelly, a band they founded with Clairo, Noa Getzug and Josh Mehling. Shelly’s self-titled debut single was released in 2020 to widespread acclaim—with its track “Steeeam” being certified gold last year—and was followed up in 2025 with Shelly 2, another duo of winsome, romantic indie-rock songs. Me and the Music sees Claud reuniting with their longtime collaborator Dan Nigro (Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan) after working together on the tracks “Soft Spot” and “Tommy” earlier in their career. “The Legend,” the song they wrote together for this record, is one of the earliest to appear on the album. It explores the feeling of being deeply in love with someone who doesn’t want to be seen with you, says Claud: “It’s sort of about a shitty relationship, and wanting to flaunt love, but not being able to do that,” they say. “I just loved the song, and I had to keep it on the record.” Me and the Music lead single “She Doesn’t Love Me” is a quintessential example of the ways in which Claud and Congleton played off each other as producers. It is, in many ways, the core of the album—a light-feeling song about what it’s like to be queer and trans in America in the 2020s. (It is a strident, driving anthem that doesn’t shy away from pain—and still makes you want to, as Claud sings on the track, put your “beers in the air.”) When Claud wrote the song with Heaven and DiRusso, they felt firmly that it should be a yacht rock song; the demo ended up “lo-fi and indie” anyway. “John kept saying ‘We have to go for it, honor the song’,” Claud recalls; they split the difference, and the resulting track is a bittersweet, resounding anthem. “I wrote that song around the time celebrities and wealthy ‘Democrats’ were leaving the country, and I thought, that’s no way to make this better,” they say. “The song is about how I don’t actually love America, I love the community I have in America… We decided to write it like an unrequited love song, like America’s a toxic girlfriend.” If Me and the Music has a true love song, it’s “I Owe You,” a dream-pop road song that’s devotional and rich. Its ebullient feeling is matched in its lyrics: “It’s like I was born to wear your rugby sweater/And I know there’s no one to love me better.” Claud says the song is about “thinking, I will spend every day just trying to be half as good of a partner as you are. Just dramatically saying you’re so wonderful,” they say. It captures the spirit of Me and the Music as a whole: Taking things day by day, taking stock of what’s around you, and embracing the beautiful things when they arrive. That doesn’t feel so heavy.