Beauty Queen is the dreamy indie-pop project of Katie Iannitello. With new music produced by indie darlings Tennis slated for release in February to follow up 2019’s debut EP Out of Touch (via Sleep Well Records), Beauty Queen crafts beachy, washed out music that is making waves across the bedroom pop scene. 

 

Delivering a sound that is at once unmistakably relevant and delightfully old-fashioned, Beauty Queen offers the perfect soundtrack to crying in the bathroom at a high school dance. The young artist continues to hit her stride and push the limits of her sound with two forthcoming singles produced by husband-and-wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley of indie-pop band Tennis. Working with the indie royalty was a dream come true for Ianitello, who counts Tennis among her biggest musical influences. “The way they worked together was really inspiring,” she reflects on the three days spent recording “Sweet Memory” and “Two of Us” in their Denver, Colorado studio in three days. 

 

With daring synthesizers and a more mature direction, Beauty Queen’s new music marks a bold coming-of-age from the lo-fi teenage dream conjured on Out of Touch. The meandering, sun-soaked daydream of an EP, written by Iannitello and produced by Henry Nowhere (Daywave), won over a number of press outlets including Line of Best Fit and Highclouds with its effervescent guitars and gliding synths. The influence of her laidback Hawaiian upbringing on her sound shows itself in her languid song structure, and the distant apathy toward pop culture that marked her teen years instead bred in her an obvious appreciation for music from decades past. Ianitello’s lilting croon is a mainstay on the new music as well as the EP, both of which teem with 1950s songwriting influence and indie charm.