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Sep 03, 2020 BUMPER By Christopher Roberts Photography by Mary Vertulfo

Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast and Ryan Galloway of Crying have teamed up for the new side-project BUMPER and have surprise-released their debut EP, pop songs 2020. You can stream the 4-song EP below and it’s officially out tomorrow (September 4).

Zauner and Galloway only live three blocks away from each other in New York, but haven’t actually seen each other since the start of the COVID-19 quarantine. In early June they started trading tracks over email. A press release says the songs on the EP “mix the playful quirks of Cibo Matto with the bombastic power of late ’80s Janet Jackson.”

Japanese Breakfast released her sophomore album, Soft Sounds From Another Planet, in July 2017 via Dead Oceans (it was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2017). Last year she announced that she has signed a book deal with the publishing company Knopf and is writing a memoir entitled Crying in H Mart. A press release described the book as such: “Crying in H Mart is Zauner’s story about growing up Korean-American, losing her mother too young, searching for identity in a hybrid culture, and finding a passion for her ancestry and Korean cooking as a way to heal and return to her roots in the wake of loss.”

Zauner’s writing has also previously appeared in Glamour and The New Yorker. There’s no word on when Crying in H Mart will be published. She’s also an accomplished music video director.

Read our 2017 interview with Japanese Breakfast on Soft Sounds From Another Planet.

pop songs 2020 Tracklist:

1. You Can Get It
2. Black Light
3. Red Brick
4. Ballad 0

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