American Indie rock sensation Mitski released her seventh album, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We mid-September of 2023, and its unique sound has been climbing charts since.

The new album features 11 singles, starting with “Bug Like An Angel” and ending with “I Love Me After You”, and was released on September 15, 2023. The album explores themes of love, and how it can both help and hurt human beings. Unlike her other albums, Mitski used this new release to experiment with the genre of her music itself. 

Mitski’s previous albums include heavy guitar, trumpet, powerful vocals, and digitally produced sounds. However, The Land Is Inhospitable experiments with a controversial sound: country. The album trades intense instrumentals and emotion, for melancholy and longing. Acoustic guitars, flutes, fiddles, piano, and church choirs are featured throughout the album, showing a heavily drawn influence from country music. Mitski has even called this album her “most American album”.

In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition, Mitski addresses the western themes in the album. “I kind of think maybe that’s also very uniquely American. I’m Asian American. I’m half white, half Asian. And so I don’t really fit into either community very well. I am an other in America, even though I am American. And I almost feel like a majority of Americans are actually other, and that’s kind of what makes America what it is,” she says. 

Despite the sudden shift in sound, Mitski’s fans are happier than ever. The album has gained extreme popularity on social media, with the single “My Love Mine All Mine” taking TikTok by storm. The single also made it to the Hot 100 songs with 6.5 million official streams in the United States alone. The Land Is Inhospitable made No. 2 in Alternative Albums and No. 3 in Top Album Sales.