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Jul 08, 2022 By Celine Teo-Blockey

Our Under the Radar with Celine Teo-Blockey podcast returns for Season 3 with Warpaint drummer, Stella Mozgawa discussing Radiate Like This—their first album in six years—and the challenges of completing an album from the other side of the world, during a pandemic. Mozgawa returned to Australia at the start of lockdown and did not have any of her usual studio gear and instruments with her. Listen to the episode below.

Warpaint was formed almost 20 years ago when drummer Shannyn Sossamon urged friends, Theresa Wayman and Emily Kokal to join her and sister, Jenny Lee Lindberg to start a band. Mozgawa became part of the foursome in 2009 when Sossamon left to concentrate on her acting career. Warpaint’s 2010 debut, The Fool, was a critical success but it was with their 2014-released self-titled follow up that Mozgawa really stepped up to her role as an equal songwriter in the band.

Mozgawa reveals how after two years at the University of Sydney, she decided to take a year off to concentrate on playing music the way her parents, both professional musicians, had done. “I guess the ultimate goal was to get a degree in psychology,” she says of her studies, “and to be a therapist, or a counselor, or something in that world of therapy.” Instead she moved to New York and never went back to school. But she’s always leaned into her psych background and in this episode we hear how much it has helped her to navigate her way in Warpaint, and any other musical project or otherwise that she’s been involved with—from producing for Courtney Barnett to playing with Kurt Vile.

As a drummer in Warpaint, a band with three strong lyricists, she knows her strengths are in the sonic production aspects of songwriting. But after 12 years of “being in each other’s pockets” through three albums (The Fool, Warpaint, and Heads Up) she shares some of the struggles she experienced with completing songs like “Send Nudes” and “Champion”—the standout opening and closing tracks of Radiate Like This.

Mozgawa also discusses growing up in Sydney as an only child of Polish immigrants, and how having two parents in a band meant she was never lonely as she often spent time with extended family and friends. While early in her career she was committed to technique and indebted to bands like Tool and CAN, she reveals that it was “MMMBop” band Hanson that first got her smitten with playing the drums.

Warpaint will be touring the U.S. later this month.

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Each monthly episode of Under the Radar features an interview with a different musician conducted by host and producer Celine Teo-Blockey.

On top of being available on all podcasting platforms the podcast also airs on WLUR, an NPR affiliate based in Lexington, VA (the city where Under the Radar is currently based).

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