Los Angeles Artist & Producer meija Announces Debut Album ‘Do Ya?’

 meija is excited to announce his debut album, Do Ya?, is set for release on March 3, 2023, via Nettwerk. The indie rock project of twenty-nine-year-old musical prodigy Jamie Sierota is purposefully a question with the themes of the album digging 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.

He explains, “I set up a little cassette recorder in the middle of the room were we played live, and just hit ‘play.’ I was trying to see how far I could get without using a synthesizer so I put guitars through weird tape machines or through, like, loops. Vocals were put through a guitar amp. I’ve never done something like this before. I usually don’t work this way at all.” 

Today, he shares the new track “How You Like” along with the danceable official video that tackles that cringy experience of buying “embarrassing” products at the local bodega. Sierota adds, “It is a song about intimacy and how our culture talks (or doesn’t!) about it. Nobody sees you at your worst quite like the clerk who works at the store down the street. You run out, last minute, barely dressed, to go make some embarrassing purchase. I mean, what’s more intimate than that? They might even know more about you than your closest friend!”

WATCH + SHARE “HOW YOU LIKE”

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 its synth-drenched, hazy alt-rock singles, “Matter Over Mind,”  “Pull Me To Pieces,” “No More Excuses” and “Not Sure How This Ends.”