This week at The Fresh Finds, we had the opportunity to chat with Mia McIntosh, a singer-songwriter from Maryland who is currently enrolled at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. She put out her first EP, Chances Are Over, when she was still in high school, drawing on stories from her youth, from her peers and topics that others might find relatable. The songs from her first project possess a gentle and soft pop sensibility, but ever since studying abroad in Valencia, Spain this past year, she’s been inspired to take on a more dynamic and experimental approach. 

McIntosh has always produced her own music, from spending her childhood tinkering on GarageBand to learning Logic in a college course. Some of her most recent singles, such as “Cheating” and “Sunday Morning,” stem from her own experiences, and the way she’s learned to perceive the world as she comes of age. “Cheating” explores the sensation of cheating yourself, and what happens when you give into new-generational vices such as stalking an old, toxic friend on social media or comparing follower counts with others. “I feel like that's something that our generation thinks about a lot,” she says. “We're growing up in a completely different world. And the song, if it had been written by somebody older, they would be referencing something different, maybe not the internet culture, but something else that they feel like they're cheating themselves with.”

The songs are bubbly and crisp, marked by poppy synths, piano melodies and McIntosh’s talented, cascading voice. McIntosh has dreams of breaching the language barrier in future songs, wanting to write in Spanish and Portuguese. She also has some jazz and bossa nova musicians in her list of inspirations—such as saxophonist Stan Getz and Brazilian guitarist Joāo Gilberto—that she would want to channel in upcoming work. 

McIntosh’s second EP, My Story, comes out on January 24. She’s excited for listeners to hear the culmination of her life as an artist, as some of these songs were born over three years ago when she was still in high school. “I hope that a lot of the songs are relatable to people,” she says, “and each of them tells its own story.”

Stay tuned for the full video interview with Mia McIntosh, only on The Fresh Finds website.