Alec's guitar playing was the driving force behind the show Green Day's American Idiot. His songwriting evokes Elvis Costello, XTC, and the Beatles. His new record "Innocent Explanations" is out 2/28/12.

On her 2018 full-length debut Abandon All Hope of Fruition, singer/songwriter Julie Mintz introduced a luminous take on Gothic Americana, each track rooted in her beautifully detailed storytelling and quietly captivating voice. In a major creative leap, the Los Angeles-based artist now shares her most urgent and immediately catchy output to date: a bright and breezy anti-love song titled “Done With Boys.” But while the track marks a significant departure from the ethereal textures of her past work, Mintz ultimately imbues “Done With Boys” with the emotional complexity and pensive sensitivity that’s always permeated her music.

“‘Done With Boys’ doesn’t have to be about dating or men or relationships—it can be an analogy for anything in your life that you desperately wanted but ended breaking your heart, to the point where you just have to let it go,” says Mintz, who created with the track with producers Daniel Presant and Sean O’Brien (a Grammy Award-winner known for his work on The National’s Sleep Well Beast). “Even though the song came from a place of disappointment, it made me realize that failure and devastation can either be a powerful depressant, or a painfully powerful catalyst to rise again—and that’s exactly what I’m choosing for this moment in my life.”  

Born and raised in the South Texas city of Corpus Christi, Mintz first began exploring her musical side as a little girl, and felt a deep affinity for the bittersweet balladry of the classic country artists her father often played home. After learning to play piano as a child (and later picking up guitar as well), she held true to country’s emotional tradition and gravitated toward “sad songs about love and heartache” as she started crafting her own material. Through the years, she’s also found the mood of her songwriting informed by her first experience in the workforce: an after-school job working in a funeral home on the Gulf of Mexico, which included driving a hearse with a body in the back. “I was a cheerleader in high school, so I used to show up at the funeral home in my cheerleading uniform,” says Mintz. “At the time it was all really scary to me, but I think it ties into me eventually writing this very Gothic music, and this thread throughout my songs about the idea of dying alone.”

While attending Emory University, Mintz studied neuroscience and behavioral biology, but decided to forgo medical school in favor of pursuing her music career. Released in 2015, her debut EP The Thin Veil merged her finely layered songwriting with minimalist production from her longtime collaborator Moby, whose live band she’d joined as a background vocalist and keyboardist in 2011. Over the years, she’s spent much of her time on the road with the pioneering artist/musician/producer, including joining him onstage for a Hollywood Bowl show presented by legendary English DJ Pete Tong as well as for Moby’s debut performance with Gustavo Dudamel and the LA Philharmonic, in addition to appearing on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

With its title lifted from American Tibetan Buddhist Pema Chödrön’s classic book When Things Fall Apart, Abandon All Hope of Fruition arrived as a mesmerizing meditation on what Mintz refers to as “letting go of the hope that things are going to be different in the future, and moving toward an appreciation of where you are right now.” Also a gifted song interpreter, Mintz has since joined forces with Moby for such offerings as a spellbinding mashup of Prince’s “Purple Rain” and Lady Gaga’s “Million Reasons”—a 2019 release that’s now amassed over 1.2 million streams on Spotify.

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