Life splinters into two paths. If you want, you can merely exist. Follow orders, keep your head down, be afraid, and punch a clock each day at work and at home until the casket closes. Or…you can question your place and purpose in the world. By questioning it, you’ll retake control and live.

Meg Myers chooses to live. Now, this choice has required time and transformation as well as unshackling herself from the expectations of a society too narcissistic to give a shit, trusting her gut independent of external opinions, listening to her intuition, and writing the kind of music she always wanted to. As such, her third full-length album, TZIA [Sumerian Records], soundtracks a moment of awakening emotionally, sexually, and spiritually in bursts of raw power, electronic fits, alternative experimentation, and jarring pop.

“My vision for it was to explore all of my repressed feelings and express them fully and to inspire others to do the same,” she explains. “The entire body of work is inspired by waking up to my multidimensionality and psychic gifts such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, claircognizance, and clairsentience. It’s also inspired by the realization that most humans have been deeply programmed to live a very limited and un-natural existence, living in a state of constant fear and dis-ease/disharmony/disconnection from reality. We’re unaware of our own healing and manifestation superpowers and abilities, forgetting how to access our intuition/this ancient wisdom that is lying dormant in our DNA.”

Meg has dedicated the better part of the last decade to breaking free. She has piled up hundreds of millions of streams across albums such as Sorry [2015] and Take Me To The Disco [2018] highlighted by the likes of “Desire,” “Sorry,” “Numb,” and “Make A Shadow.” Along the way, she has canvased the country alongside the Pixies, Alt-J, My Chemical Romance, Royal Blood, Smashing Pumpkins, and Jane’s Addiction in addition to igniting Jimmy Kimmel LIVE! and gracing the bills of Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Governors Ball. Pre-Stranger Things, she breathed fire into Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” with a stunning rendition initially introduced on NPR Tiny Desk. The cover made history by capturing #1 on the Billboard Alternative Chart 42 weeks after its release. She’s also earned the praise of Billboard, Cosmopolitan, GRAMMY.com, Nylon, Rolling Stone, and more.

Beginning in 2019, she crafted the bulk of what would become TZIA at home in Los Angeles with just a piano, guitar, and ukulele before rounding out the process with collaborators such as Andy D. Park, Thomas Powers, and Mike Elizondo. The music absorbed the ebbs and flows of her growth.

“I feel the transformation I’ve been going through since Take Me To The Disco has been quite accelerated,” she notes. “Once you realize you’ve been a slave to the system, it’s incredibly liberating to pave your own path, knowing that the universe/God has your back. The most challenging thing about the path of awakening is the realization that no one is going to save you and you have to take complete responsibility for your life. This Is where grace, forgiveness, and trust in something greater come in handy.”

She initially teased TZIA with “HTIS” [feat. Carmen Vandenberg & Luna Shadows], “SOPHIA <144>” [feat. Nicole Perretti], and “CHILDREN OF LIGHT II.” Rain Mag hailed the latter as “an uplifting rock ballad that expresses the spiritual growth of one of indie rock’s greatest female vocalists,” and WONDERLAND. raved, “Meg Myers cultivates a feeling of suspense, eventually dropping into a beat that pounds through your body.”

Meanwhile, the Elizondo-produced single “ME” hinges on a head-nodding guitar-boosted groove. Her vocals swing like a pendulum from swaggering funkified verses towards the fiery hard-hitting hook, “Honey, this ain’t just in the cards, ‘cause what I’m looking for feels transcendent. You are not the one for me. There’s someone else, there’s someone else…and that’s me.”

“I was about to breakup with this guy I’d been dating for a few months,” she recalls. “I asked him to leave the house, because I needed to write a song. I needed to be in solitude to let it out. He finally left, and ‘ME’ was born. I was cracking up when I kept repeating the chorus. I was so happy and mesmerized by my higher self. It was a pivotal moment for me in my self-care and trust in the universe.”

Another Elizondo collaboration, “T33NAGERS” pairs her cathartic delivery with distant synths and icy beat-craft. She elaborates, “It’s about breaking out of the mold we’ve been programmed to live by. I believe our younger generation can teach us a lot about this if we slow down and pay attention to what they have to say.”

Backed by a baby harp purchased on Etsy and ukulele, she delivers an uneasy, unrestrained, and undeniable cover of the Linkin Park classic “Numb,” which she co-produced. “I received a vision sonically to cover this song,” she admits. “Chester Bennington’s energy had been coming into my realm for a while, and I felt passionate about doing it. I felt so much repressed energy come to the surface and be healed during this process.”

Then, there’s “ELEVENELEVEN.” Conceived on her piano “Everette,” it channels a higher realm with what she deems, “a love letter to God.”

“It’s this feeling of shedding everything in order to get closer to the truth of who we really are,” she goes on. “It’s dedicated to my dear friend Aaron who passed away and to his mom Ellen.”

In the end, TZIA may just inspire you to live.

“I hope you question things more,” she leaves off. “…And you realize we’re not alone. Yes, I mean in terms of the universe, but also as a human collective. Many of us are experiencing similar feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and patterns. We are brothers and sisters. I hope you hear these messages, feel less alone, and remember the truth of who you really are in your soul.”