Mia Day

For an entire year, Mia Day woke up out of breath. Her father had left her mother, and her partner — the guitarist in her band at the time — soon followed suit. Unmoored and unglued, she made her way through each day doing the only thing that had ever made sense to her: writing music. Those songs, forged during what could only be described as a hell year, comprise the musician’s most vital release yet, Hellier, Forever (out May 17th), which takes its title from a supernatural docuseries Day and her partner used to watch about a spooky Kentucky town — and the fact that if you say its name fast enough, it sounds like 365 days of torture. “I made this album as a way to survive,” she says.