Los Angeles artist and producer meija shares the official video for his new single, “Time For Us.” The introspective indie rock number, which dropped over the holidays, was placed on Spotify’s covetable New Music Friday playlist and on All New Indie. He explains, “I wrote this song after deconstructing a religion I grew up with. I was in a place of wanting to reject the ‘spiritual’ and embrace the ‘rational.’ I was visiting a dormant volcano in the desert, and on the hike back was writing these lyrics. I was suddenly faced with this otherworldly landscape and was feeling mystified by it, but I was trying to rationalize the feeling. The song is an internal conversation about trying to balance the feeling that nothing matters with the realization that some things just can’t be explained.”
When asked about the video meija adds, “I wanted the video for ‘Time For Us’ to really focus on the lyrics. Something about this traveling songwriter idea (inspired by Inside Llewyn Davis and Bob Dylan) felt like it put the focus on the song. The song’s all about accepting the fact that you can’t control everything. And sometimes you have to let things happen and just go from there, for better for worse.”
“Time For Us” is the latest offering from his upcoming debut album, Do Ya?, out March 3, 2023, via Nettwerk. Twenty-nine-year-old musical prodigy Jamie Sierota purposefully titled Do Ya? a question because the album digs into the gray area that comes with looking deeper into traditions, relationships, parenthood, religion, and even death. Jamie explains, “It’s about looking at life, at death, and just sort of sitting with it, but also, you’re not really okay with it. It’s like push and pull.”
Having launched his career at age 15 in the hit pop band Echosmith, Sierota had to start over again in his early twenties when he stepped away from the sibling band to get married and start his own family in Los Angeles. He then spent the better part of the last decade establishing himself as a writer and producer, eventually working with artists like Adam Lambert, Aly & AJ, JAWNY, and Quinn XCII. Do Ya? was recorded after being inspired by The Beatles’ documentary and digging into his vinyl collection. He decided he wanted to relearn how to write and record in a completely analog fashion and, for the first time in his career, was able to make exactly the record that he wanted to make without any exterior influences.
Under the guise of meija, LA based producer and songwriter Jamie Sierota makes music for our collective inner child. His synth-drenched, indie pop adjacent brand of rock mines the simple moments we tend to ignore, those that tend to mean far more than we’d like to admit. With the release of his 2019 debut EP, So Long Kid, and the 2021 follow-up EP, Premonition, he has explored themes of nostalgia and naive love and what that all means in a messy and sometimes chaotic world. It has gained him a loyal fan following with over 15 million streams worldwide and praise from outlets like Flood, Earmilk, Complex, Ladygunn, KCRW, and more. The upcoming album follows the cheeky EP Side A and includes the synth-drenched, hazy alt-rock singles, “How You Like,” “Matter Over Mind,” “Pull Me To Pieces,” “No More Excuses” and “Not Sure How This Ends.”
