Inheritance by May + The Ladies

May Klug’s debut EP Inheritance is a bold, high-femme exploration of modern disconnection, consumerist surrealism, and the need to be held—emotionally, digitally, and sonically. Taking the aesthetics she explored in previous queercore art-punk project Egg Girl Girl and running with them in a whole new direction, the new release is as nostalgic as it is forward-looking, centered around the decaying hum of her beloved Casio keyboard. Rather than masking the instrument’s imperfections, May leans into them—transforming the keyboard’s natural breakdown into a compositional tool, a ghostly character in the EP’s emotional narrative.

The opening track “Dance With Me” throbs with the desire to be seen, heard, and felt: “The speaker is a microphone, the microphone’s a speaker / So when you dance in front of the subwoofer I can hear you.” The lyric’s reversal of input and output devices mirrors the yearning for connection in a world of mediated intimacy. What follows is “Likable,” a tune so cute and lilting it nearly masks the desperation underneath. Wrapped in glitchy synths, May longs for a connection that always falls short: “You say I’m incredible / And you wanna know me / And never talk to me again.” Perhaps being gazed upon under the neon lights is never quite enough to feel whole.

May’s searing wit blazes brightest on the third track, where her careful falsetto peaks as breaks as she’s “losing touch spacing out at the soft curve / Of the sans serif font of the ad for Ozempic.” The track dissolves into surrealist irony—chanting “Med Spa” like a disturbed matra or haunted commercial jingle—offering commentary on the cult of celebrity, aesthetic labor, and digital dissociation. May relates our everyday digital experiences in a manner nobody can miss, hitting it bluntly on the nose: “I’m scrolling past the short form video content posted by NATO of an F35 jet with Charli XCX in the background / What the fuck is going on?”

A vulnerable closer masquerading as a whirling bop, “Holding On” meditates on intimacy through distance and restraint. With minimal lyrical lifting, May takes the listener into a relationship characterized by its tension: “Tracing the words you wrote with my finger / I can feel your discipline.” The tension between closeness and control plays out in hushed vocals and tactile imagery.

Inheritance blends shimmering synth-pop with experimental textures. Whirring, thumping, and celestial, the EP captures the overstimulated hum of late-stage capitalism through the lens of a high-femme popstar. Themes of modernity, detachment, longing, and dissociation haunt every track—yet May’s wit and vulnerability ensure they never fall flat. This is pop music for the extremely online, the emotionally available, and all of us who simply crave the love we deserve. ~ Bryn Battani

May Klug is a composer based in Minneapolis, MN. Her project May + The Ladies celebrates high-femme pop spectacle, drawing from her experimental synthesizer practice, past as a frontwoman in queercore bands, and deep love of house, bubblegum bass, and electroclash. Joined by Jared Hemming and Cleo Pupillo, this is May's heartfelt, desperate, and misguided attempt to make extremely likable music.