Some music artists have out-of-the-box sounds, while others make music that sounds completely out of this world. jess joy is a New Orleans-based multi-disciplinary artist who alchemizes life’s experiences — love, joy, death, and pain — and transforms them into experimental, audible, and visual art expressions. Her music is more than theatrical voice changes, fierce vibratos, wisecracks, and energizing tunes. The lyrics are deep, heartfelt, and often heavy.
Since their solo debut in 2023, jess joy has released two albums. PATREEARCHY examines the roots and fruits of patriarchy, with joy’s voice likened to the sound of the band Sparks by Bob Boilen on NPR All Songs Considered. SOURCEHEIRESS, a visual album she directed released in 2023, tells a story of reclaiming her power and spirituality. The music was a collaboration with producer and instrumentalist Mike Byrne (ex Smashing Pumpkins).
joy is slated to release a new record, WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN, with Joyful Noise Recordings on May 30, 2025. The album, produced by Greg Saunier, discusses holding onto love in a world on edge: belonging in polycrisis.
WON’T BE KICKED OUT THE GARDEN is a psychological, romantic comedy-drama about holding onto love in a world on edge. Harkening to the original sin, your narrator, joy, is possessed by chaos and impulses of the id—she is/they are the rebel child expelled from paradise, the fallen angel. joy dips in and out of fantasies, fragments into sparring personalities, goes on a discordant bender in Berlin, glides on the heels of saxophones, takes a folk-baroque flight to the moon, and wrestles with dying synthesizer dreams before being called back to Earth by kin, where the only way to return to one’s body is through feeling the pain of grief. There, joy is faced with the trial of re-membering love before the world was split by the binary of good and evil. Your author is inspired by the writing of Ursula K. Le Guin: “To be whole is to be part; true voyage is return.”
Produced and mixed by Greg Saunier of Deerhoof (save the vocals and three songs produced by joy), the album was made with main collaborators Laura Fisher and Alex Brownstein, who traveled to Tucson to record with Saunier.
Today, joy shares the album's first single, "owed to spring," in which your narrator expresses reproductive anxiety in the modern political and environmental crisis. joy directed and produced the "owed to spring" music video in addition to twenty music videos to date, thanks to contributions from her supporters on Patreon.
"They converse with their higher self on whether or not to follow their desire to give birth," they say. "Is giving life truly a gift, or is it a selfish act that contributes to over-population and may result in a life of suffering for any child born into late-stage capitalism? They wonder.”
jess joy is planning an album release show on June 7 in New Orleans. Keep an eye on her website for tickets and more info. | 
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