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We don’t have enough room in our hearts for the love MARIS generates; she's someone you cannot afford to doubt or ignore. Talented, vibrant in every quality, and with a voice that ruins any other singers for you, we cannot champion MARIS enough. With her latest single, "Losing People’ those sentiments are doubled down. We have the pleasure of hosting this firecracker at our NYC offices for a private PRIDE showcase and dug into the latest, the good gossip, and great advice:

OnesToWatch: Maris, what have you been up to? 


MARIS: Dave. Is it okay if I call you Dave? 

100%. Most people call me Dave. 

Dave, I have been having the best time playing shows and touring and getting ready for festivals and making music and putting music out. 

Love this. You look well. Your smile always radiates, but especially today. 

Oh, thank you. I'm so excited to be at this OnesToWatch Pride event.

We're here for the prideful, for the colorful. You can’t love music without loving the gay community. That’s my hot take. 

That’s a good take. Queerness has always moved the culture forward. I think by necessity, right? That's what all great music and great art does, it reminds us that the lesser than aren't lesser than. 


Yes, I like that. You have been very busy, it seems. Do you struggle to not be busy? 

Like mentally? If I'm not busy, I get a little freaked out. 

What haunts you when you slow down, what gets to you? 

I think the feeling of if I really want it, why am I not doing anything to get it? So then if I'm not busy, I have too long to think. I'm very driven, but, you know, life is about balance.  

I agree. What do you do to relax? 


Ooh. Well, I love a bubble bath. I do epsom salts with magnesium, because my muscles can get sore, especially because I've been trying to bodybuild. My muscles have been really sore. I also love a little tincture. I was told by a vocal coach recently that I have to stop smoking weed, which is kind of devastating for me.
But I'll be okay. Other ways of getting it. So I've been doing tincture. 

This is a good look into your self-care. At large, what do you think you would have done differently, years ago, if you saw where you are now? 

I would have started to be more outrageous sooner. To be fair, I've always kind of been outrageous on the internet, since I was like a teenager. But I entered a phase where some people in my life discouraged me from being outrageous and were saying that people would think I was a joke and nobody would take my music seriously. There's a line for sure, but now the more that I've been showcasing my personality online, the more response I've been getting and the more people want to hang out with me at live shows. 

Has your audience changed it all? Is it the same people just more of them? 


I think so. It's pretty interesting. There's a pretty broad demographic in my audience, which I feel really grateful for. We have a lot of straight guys, but then the majority is girls and gays. It’s been really fun getting to see the intermingling of older people and younger people and straight guys and trans girls and people from different walks of life and different worlds coming together to dance. It makes me really excited because I think that that's what we need right now. It feels really divided, but in reality, we're so much more alike than we are different. Getting to a live show and dancing with somebody and singing with somebody makes you remember it's all going to be okay. We're all experiencing the human condition, and we can get each other through it. 

Very well put. It's nice to see artists such as yourself building bridges at a time when it feels like everyone's blowing them up. 

Well, the thing about blowing up a bridge, is that it comes from an influx of emotion and rage, which is so much more predictable and easier to do. I think that's why people turn to it. But I'm sick of it. I'm not trying to rage bait anybody. Trying to love bait. 

You’re doing a great job of it. In my mind, you’re famous for your live shows. 


No way. 

Are you not? 

Me, famous? Sorry, that's a video on the internet. This girl goes, “Me, famous?” 

What makes a great live set? How do you put it all together? 


My drummer, Tiger, is literally the best, he's my best friend in the world, he's got great legs and a great heart. What I always tell him is that structure allows me to improvise. So I think a good show for me has flagpoles, beats we’re always going to hit in the structure of the show, and then between those moments, I feel way more comfortable improvising and connecting with people.
I'm big on eye contact. I don't like when I go to a show and somebody never looks at me. I like to be reminded that they're a person and they see me as much as I see them. A good amount of crowd interaction makes a show, but also not the same thing the whole time. If you have people clapping on every song, their hands are going to start to hurt and then they're not thinking, “Oh my god, I'm having so much fun.”
They're thinking, “Fuck, my hands hurt.” We live in such an age of convenience and constant stimulation that if you're not giving somebody something that is better than sitting on the couch, you're not going to be able to get people to come out and buy tickets. That literally is the equation. For me, touch is really big. So I've been building in bits in the set that gets people to talk to a stranger or interact with somebody they haven't met. People have come to shows with signs that say they got engaged at the MARIS show, or met in the merch line and now they’re best friends. There's a big group of girls that all met at the shows and now they carpool together and they're coming to 16 stops on the 27 stop tour together. That part's been one of the most fulfilling aspects, because it's bigger than me. I just can be the vibe captain and I can soundtrack it. I love that they're creating lifelong friendships with each other. 

Let's get into some silly questions. What's the gayest you ever felt? 

Oh my god. I wrote the song, “Give Me a Sign” about this girl who will not be named and she doesn't know, still, she has a boyfriend now. 

Classic. 

We would hang out for like 6 to 7 hours at a time and she would make me dinner and I would bring her flowers and we would sit on the couch and make prolonged eye contact and have these crazy in-depth conversations and just talk and talk and talk for hours, but never kiss. It always felt like we were right about to, but she told me once that she hates when people come on too strong. So then I was like, let me pace myself. And then I just got too nervous because I didn't want to make her feel weird. So then “Give Me a Sign” came out of this feeling of being desperate for any kind of signal that means you want me to make a move on you. I never made a move. It’s such a sapphic dynamic. Otherwise, my song “Heavenly Bodies” is about being in high school. When this girl was fighting with her boyfriend, we would hook up and she would smoke me out. That's probably the 2 gayest times of my life, mostly because it involved a lot of yearning and a lot of being the 2nd option. 

We've all been there before. If you could take 3 items to a desert Island, what would they be? 

Aquaphor, sunscreen, and a water bottle. 

Oh my god, you're a survivalist. 

Alternatively, if I was ready to peace out, I would take my headphones.
Actually, I could listen to the beach. So I wouldn't take my headphones. I would take my little brother, so we could hang out. I would take MDMA. And then I would have a fun drink and then I would die on the island. 


Both good answers. One was very pragmatic. One a little bit more fun and surreal. Going to end on a couple recommendations. I always ask, what would you put a friend on to? So a non-music recommendation. A place to visit, something to eat, something to watch, whatever it is. Then, I’d love a music rec. 

I just did my 1st overhead press at the gym the other day. Just the barbell, but that's 44 pounds and that's not light. So I would say I've been recommending overhead presses because I really want to get better at it. Also, I've been watching this show, Widow's Bay. It’s a horror thriller, and it's also funny. It is so, so, so good. I'm addicted to it. And then for music, I've been listening to Madison Beer’s album, locket. Maybe this is controversial to say, but I didn't super connect to the creative. Like when I saw it on Instagram. She's amazing and obviously super beautiful and cool, but I didn't really feel super connected to the visual of it. But then I was listening to some of the songs, and I was totally blown away. I can't stop listening to those songs. 

Wow, that's great. Then lastly, we want to end on your words. Anything you want to share, advice, anecdotes. 

Well, if you're feeling panicked about AI and about how artificial intelligence is generating music and you don't know what's real anymore, I would say you should make an effort to go see local acts and indie touring groups that come through, because my tickets on average are 20 bucks. And we're going to do an hour and a half of music. I think that coming to see somebody in real life and making friends at shows is going to be the cure to the AI panic surrounding music, at least. So go to local shows, buy CDs and stream those artists and then you can fight AI. 


Thank you.