MAITA

When Maria Maita-Keppeler was in college, she studied the art of Japanese woodblock printmaking. “By the nature of the medium, you have to be bold,” she says — but, you also have to be delicate, deliberate, exacting. All those little cuts on their own add up to the whole — to a picture, a story, a life. The Japanese-American singer-songwriter applies that same approach to her band, MAITA; she only writes songs she intends to finish. She only makes cuts in service of the whole. And once the debris has been blown away, the melodies remain — vibrant, sharp, and often heartbreaking. The band’s latest LP, want, out July 25 via Fluff & Gravy Records, is all of the above. A razor’s edge look at a relationship in turmoil, the record serves to strip away everything undesired in Maita-Keppeler’s life, leaving behind only that titular word: want. want marks the band’s latest evolution: a woozy swirl of crystalline rock and melancholy that examines the agony and ecstasy of a long-term relationship in turmoil — and what Maita-Keppeler truly desires out of life. “The album allowed me this opportunity to be a little more courageous about my feelings,” she says. “I grew up feeling very much like the peacekeeper. Now, I have to be really assertive about what I want for myself.”