‘Underside’ is the second single to be released from māsa’s upcoming debut album, Sailors and Insomniacs and you can listen to the track here first on SMM before it drops tomorrow. The song follows the traditional-inspired ballad ‘My Love Went to Sea’ and takes us on a different, more introspective journey. On ‘Underside,’ a gloomy narrative involving feminism and environmental destruction is underpinned by a sonic landscape of autoharps, strings, and arpeggios.

Faron and Merle, bandmates and sisters, stayed true to their folk roots by drawing inspiration for this song from the tale The Fisherman and His Wife. As told by the Brothers Grimm, a foolish woman is granted three wishes from a flounder fish, but the shallow, materialistic nature of her requests results in nothing good. In ‘Underside,’ māsa chose to flip the narrative: “In our version, the woman befriends the fish. They are both oppressed by society: the woman limited by gender roles, and the fish by the poisoning of the sea. The “Underside” is an imagined space. It represents both the psychological darkness of the repressed woman, and the often unseen evil of humanity’s impact on the oceans.”

‘Oil in the eyes / Of the flounder as it dies / But it comes alive / On the Underside’ māsa sing, invoking a strong connection between femininity and nature. In doing this, the song calls for female power to revive and restore the balance between humanity and the natural world. Sailors and Insomniacs is out August 5.