Brooklyn indie rock trio Myra Lee turn fractured family history into a feverish, slow-burning storm on their debut single “Magpie,” reintroducing themselves through an invigorating barrage of tension, urgency, and emotional release.

Stream: “Magpie” – Myra Lee

Memory has a way of climbing back into the present without warning – in fragments, in echoes, in the half-told stories that shape who we become before we fully understand them.

Family histories don’t always arrive neatly; they linger in the background, in the silences between conversations, in the details we inherit without asking. That tension – between what’s known and what’s withheld, between curiosity and distance – pulses at the core of Myra Lee’s debut single “Magpie,” a smoldering song that turns generational fracture into a visceral, immediate, and all-consuming experience.

Guitars crash and coil around one another, rising with a restless, almost cinematic urgency as Tahlia Amanson’s voice cuts through with striking clarity. There’s a push and pull at play throughout – between sweetness and strain, light and weight – that mirrors the emotional terrain beneath the surface. “Magpie” doesn’t just revisit the past; it drags it into the present, reframing memory as both a burden and a source of identity. The result is a feverish indie rock slow-burn that transforms inherited pain into a living, breathing force.

Can’t touch the ground
I’m on a ladder
trying to reach the
the room light socket

heard the telephone
ran to mother’s room
up the spiral staircase
with no railing to hold

Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “Magpie,” the feverish, slow-burning lead single from Myra Lee’s debut album Capture the Flag, out June 26th. Formerly known as Dino Expedition, the Brooklyn-based trio of Tahlia Amanson (vocals/guitar), Aiden Velazquez (bass), and McCabe Teems (drums) step into a bold new chapter under the name Myra Lee, a shared identity that reflects both their collective evolution and creative unity. What began as Amanson’s solo songwriting project has grown into a fully realized band, each member shaping the music’s texture and intensity – from Teems’ driving, instinctive percussion to Velazquez’s fluid, grounding bass lines and Amanson’s open-tuned guitar work that swells with feedback and feeling.

The name itself carries intention: Inspired by Myra Lee, the 1996 debut album from Cat Power, the band’s new moniker functions as both homage and transformation – a fictionalized persona that blurs the line between artist and character. Since their formation, the trio have immersed themselves in a city alive with collaboration and constant motion, pulling from a lineage of ’90s indie rock icons like Yo La Tengo, Pavement, Electrelane, and Sonic Youth while carving out a sound that feels raw, expansive, and distinctly their own.

Following their 2024 debut Thanks a Million – an intensely intimate, memory-driven release that Atwood Magazine praised as “a heavy-hitting and deeply human indie rock album that aches inside and out with the weight of memory and raw emotion” – Myra Lee return with renewed energy, sounding bolder, louder, and more sonically adventurous than ever. Recorded live with an emphasis on immediacy and emotional detail, Capture the Flag expands their palette with strings, layered instrumentation, and a deeper dive into personal history, tracing themes of family, distance, and reflection with striking specificity.

At the center of it all is “Magpie,” a song that introduces this new era with both force and feeling.

As Tahlia Amanson explains, the song was inspired by a distant, fragmented connection to her father’s side of the family – a relationship shaped more by absence and secondhand understanding than lived experience, where stories were filtered, withheld, or left incomplete. In writing “Magpie,” she draws a line between that inherited disconnect and the figures who defined her upbringing, using the symbol as both a reflection of familial fracture and a way of processing the behaviors she witnessed in her youth.

“I can only remember one time when I met my aunt Maggie,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “Out of fear from my father’s past, he kept my sisters and me separated from his family. While I use ‘Magpie’ as a symbol for the misfortune of my family’s relationship, I also see it describing my mother’s tendencies.”

That history hums throughout every second of “Magpie,” but the band never lets the weight sit still. The song surges forward on sheer momentum – guitars stacking and straining, drums pushing harder with each pass, every element feeding into a slow, deliberate climb that feels both controlled and on the verge of collapse. What begins as a smolder gradually catches fire, each chorus arriving with greater intensity, greater release. There’s a kinetic thrill in the way Myra Lee stretch the tension over the song’s five and a half minutes, letting it coil and tighten before finally breaking open, Amanson’s voice guiding the chaos with a steady, luminous presence.

That sense of ascent mirrors the song’s inner world. The lyrics move like memory itself – fragmented, vivid, and slightly off-balance – placing us inside moments that feel both achingly distant and eerily present. “can’t touch the ground / I’m on a ladder / trying to reach the / the room light socket” opens on an image of instability, of reaching without grounding, before the scene shifts: “heard the telephone / ran to mother’s room / up the spiral staircase / with no railing to hold.” Each line builds on that unease, tracing a childhood shaped by absence, distance, and unanswered questions.

Can’t leave this place
I don’t know you Magpie
Betrayed your brother
So long ago

He didn’t forget
The baggage you kept
Chose faith instead of
facing the past

When Amanson sings, “Can’t leave this place / I don’t know you Magpie,” the song’s emotional core comes into focus. There’s longing there, but also confrontation – a reckoning with inherited stories and the people who live inside them. The magpie itself becomes layered with meaning, carrying both folklore’s omen of misfortune and the personal weight of fractured family ties. Even the line, “Chose faith instead of facing the past” lands with remarkable force, capturing the generational deflection that lingers long after the moment has passed.

In Myra Lee’s hands, these snapshots don’t just recount history – they give it motion, urgency, and sound.

“Magpie” doesn’t resolve its tensions so much as it inhabits them, letting every chord, every lyric, every swell of noise carry the past forward into the present, where it continues to echo, evolve, and demand to be felt.

That push and pull – between heaviness and release, memory and momentum – is exactly where the band feel most at home. As drummer McCabe Teems puts it, “it will swirl around in your ear; you might like it!” – a fittingly offhand description for a song that refuses to sit still, instead circling, building, and pulling listeners deeper with every pass.

Below, Myra Lee dive deeper into the origins of “Magpie,” the evolution behind their new name, and the creative chemistry that defines this next chapter – offering a closer look at the stories, sounds, and shared vision shaping Capture the Flag. Stream the indie rock trio’s second debut single exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and get lost in the fuzz and rush, the charm and churn of Myra Lee as they come into their own with music that hits hard and lingers long after the last note fades.

Capture the Flag is out June 26.

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:: stream/purchase Magpie here ::

:: connect with Myra Lee here ::

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Stream: “Magpie” – Myra Lee

A CONVERSATION WITH MYRA LEE

Tahlia Amanson: You know, it’s a good mixture of overdrive guitar, a buildup of sound that meets a lighter, more quaint voice. It’s pretty music, very versatile. Some have said they can see some of the songs being in a coming-of-age film?!

McCabe Teems: It will swirl around in your ear; you might like it!

Tahlia: Cabe and Aiden joined the band after the initial creation of Dino Expedition. We’ve been a band for about a year and a half now, and while I write all the songs, we all collectively bring our own ideas, whether it’s Cabe’s drums parts, my endless open tunings, or Aiden’s bass licks. At the end of the day, we wanted it to feel more like our band, something that we named together. A few months ago, we sat at Martha’s Bakery in Williamsburg, brainstorming ideas. Cabe always liked my first band name ‘Tahls’, but I wanted something that wasn’t my name. I think we really fell in love with the idea of having this “stage name,” a fictional character in a way. Since renaming, some people have thought my name was actually Myra, it’s pretty silly!

McCabe: To me, Dino Expedition didn’t fit the general aesthetic qualities we were trying to present. Myra Lee is the name of Cat Power’s first record, an artist we all love and admire.

Tahlia: Electrelane, Cat Power, Yo La Tengo, Daughter, Silversun Pickups. It’s been super thrilling to experiment with different instruments, sounds, and genres. All of us have such a diverse taste in music, I believe it truly helps to keep the music we create alive and interesting.

McCabe: The Blue Nile, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, PJ Harvey, Arthur Russell, Crystal Castles. I love that we get to play music that’s tonally very sweet and pretty but we play it very loud and with strain and grip. Favorite combo.

Tahlia: This city crawls with artists from all mediums, not just music. I love being able to work with other artists through music, being able to uplift all of our art together, like a community. Since moving to Brooklyn five years ago, I do believe that my sound has gone through several different chapters, each one being more and more influenced by this big, yet small city.

McCabe: The great thing about living in a big city is that you will always meet new people and discover new artists and bands just by going to random shows around town. Infinite freshness.

McCabe: “Magpie” is one of my favorite songs Tahlia has written. Before I joined the band, I remember Tahls playing a solo set at Columbia University and that was the song that really stood out to me. I just think it’s an important one.

Tahlia: On this new record, we really experimented with more instruments (i.e. cello, viola, e-bow). “Magpie” felt like a great introduction to the new chapter of the band, and the expansion of our sound/vision.

Tahlia: I wrote “Magpie” when I moved back to New York in 2022 after recording in Memphis, Tennessee with Calvin Lauber. The song references my estranged relationship with my fathers side of the family, specifically my Aunt Maggie. I can only recall a few times when we spoke over the phone; my mother always being the catalyst. I wanted the song to also touch on the perspective that I had on my mother growing up. There are multiple definitions for the word ‘Magpie’; one being the bird, which in British folklore, seeing a singular Magpie can indicate misfortune. The other definition refers to the behavioral elements of a chatterbox / hoarder, aka my mother.

Tahlia: In the past few years, I’ve started to write more about my father’s side of the family; something that has always been a touchy subject. “Magpie” was one of the first songs to focus on that aspect of my life. Every song on the record has this underlying theme, a rather reflection of the past. “Magpie” felt like a good mixture of reflection, some vengefulness, as well as being grateful; all of these feelings play crucial roles within the stories on this record.

McCabe: Hopefully people feel moved to use similar adjectives.

Tahlia: I would say Capture the Flag goes deeper into that memory and raw emotion than Thanks A Million. While the song writing on this new record focuses more closely on specific events and detail, our use of live recording all the songs, to me, feels like it truly draws out the full story, kinda like the instruments are speaking.

Tahlia: For me, “Magpie” is one of my more fun and giddy songs, obviously not in the aspect of storyline, but the instrumentals are very much upbeat. I think “Magpie” is a song to dance to, or listen to on a long road trip, blasting it in the car – that’s something I hope listeners take away after hearing the song. From being in the studio, to playing this song live, I learned that I love trying to replicate the sounds of an old car through instruments, and that’s what really felt special about the string usage, particularly in this song, it kinda rawrs… I love it!

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:: stream/purchase Magpie here ::

:: connect with Myra Lee here ::

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Stream: “Magpie” – Myra Lee

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