Maggie Lindemann doesn’t scream on her new headsplit EP. That’s what Sickbrain is for. “I wish I could,” she shrugs. “She’s kind of like me—but the me that screams.” Lindemann instead keeps things on the edge of control, blending electronic tension with a witchy new aesthetic, and letting the songs speak for whatever’s swirling beneath the surface.
“I didn’t know what I was doing,” she admits. “I just knew I wanted to do it.” That’s how headsplit was born—a self-described “moment” in between full-lengths, shaped more by instinct and eyeliner than a master plan. “I just wanted to try something new,” she says. “The songs kind of shaped themselves. The aesthetic followed my fashion. Less plaid, more lace. More Amy Lee.”
Still, don’t let the gauzy sleeves fool you. There’s grit all over this thing, from the anxiety of “Hostage” to the dizzying devotion of “die for,” where she flips romantic cliché into something visceral and vaguely terrifying—in the best way. “It’s about finding that person,” she says. “The one you’d do anything for.” Asked if she believes in forever, Lindemann doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah,” she says. “Forever isn’t easy, but it’s possible.”
That tug-of-war between love and fear, euphoria and self-doubt, defines the whole project. “There’s always this anxiety in the back of your mind that everyone leaves,” she says. “Even when things are good.” The EP crackles with that energy, a portrait of someone in motion, still shaking off the noise of expectation and insecurity. Or as she puts it on “24,” a standout track about aging in public: “You feel on top of the world, and then a few months later you’re like, ‘Now what?’”
Now what, indeed. Lindemann just passed a milestone she’s been quietly eyeing for years—Hostage officially surpassed the stream count of her breakout hit “Pretty Girl.” “That song did so much for me,” she says, “but I want people to love my new stuff too. To see that it matters.”
It does. headsplit might be a transitional record, but it’s not filler. It’s a mirror, cracked and self-lit, reflecting back every contradictory emotion Lindemann is willing to share—and a few she probably shouldn’t. “I’ve had moments where I didn’t know what I was doing,” she says. “But somehow it came together.” No scream necessary.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
