Espresso, ecstasy and existentialism: Mykki Blanco announces new album titled CAFE PARADISO
Mykki Blanco is back, but don’t expect a return to anything resembling business as usual. The ever-shifting artist announces seventh studio album, CAFE PARADISO, arriving September 4th, 2026 via Transgressive Records, alongside its lush and nocturnal first taste, “Little Feet”, featuring Ian Isiah and Breakaway.
Recorded in New York and shaped alongside longtime creative partner and producer Drew “FaltyDL” Lustman, CAFE PARADISO finds Blanco in a different kind of mood. Less costume change, more inner monologue. Less theatrical smoke machine, perhaps, and more sitting alone at a café table wondering what on earth happens next.
It is, in Blanco’s own words, “a record for artsy kids” — a soundtrack for cosmopolitan aesthetes, dreamers, wanderers and anyone attempting to make sense of their life between an espresso, a cigarette break and an increasingly suspicious amount of time spent staring into the middle distance.
The album’s lead single, “Little Feet”, immediately sets the scene. Sultry, nostalgic and deliciously after-hours, the track drifts through late-night encounters, fleeting romances and metropolitan wandering with the kind of glamour that feels both intimate and slightly unreal. Ian Isiah and Breakaway help turn the song into a hazy three-way conversation beneath the streetlights.
Its accompanying video, directed by Alvaro Kreyden, pushes the decadence even further. Set inside a sprawling European mansion, the visuals embrace hedonism, experimentation and sensuality with gleeful abandon — somewhere between an art-school fever dream and the sort of party you probably shouldn’t have attended on a Tuesday.
If Mykki Blanco has built a career on reinvention, CAFE PARADISO feels less like another sharp turn than a moment of arrival. Following 2022’s Stay Close to Music and the Postcards from Italia EP, Blanco stepped away from recording to pursue an MFA in Switzerland and further develop a multidisciplinary visual art practice.
The result appears to be a renewed sense of focus without sacrificing any of the unpredictability that has made Blanco such a compelling presence in the first place.
Musically, CAFE PARADISO is described as a three-act play pulling from dance music, art pop, underground club culture and more left-field corners of the musical map. References including Saint Etienne, The Silver Apples and Towa Tei suggest that genre boundaries may once again be treated as little more than decorative suggestions.
But beneath the movement, the nightlife and the international postcards, CAFE PARADISO is also concerned with something quieter: the pleasure of being alone in public.
Mykki Blanco CAFE PARADISO album, out on September 4th via Transgressive Records.
That may be the most intriguing proposition of all. Not a point-A-to-B record. Not a pre-game soundtrack. Not necessarily music demanding that you immediately find the nearest dancefloor. Instead, this is an album for existing — for observing, wandering, thinking and, crucially, enjoying your own company.
After years spent moving between music, performance and visual art — and collaborations with the likes of Arca, Basement Jaxx, Charli XCX, Blood Orange, Kelsey Lu, Michael Stipe, Anohni and Jónsi — Mykki Blanco seems to be entering this next chapter with a little less urgency to transform and a little more confidence in simply occupying the room.
Or the café. Or the mansion. Preferably all three.
Tracklist_
- Little Feet
- NYC Dogs
- Butt Sex
- Easy Does It
- Wasted in Soho
- FOXES
- F**k as Friends
- Hey Dopeman
- Tough Guy
- Cut Me Open
- Spread For Me
- God Is Alive
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