Mattiel: a stomper about the LA party, from a mountain in Italy
A Laurel Canyon stomp aimed at Silver Lake bars and the Marmont, written after she sold up and moved to a medieval Italian town.
BY JOLT Staff · OCT 26 2026 · 1 min readMattiel's new single is a feel-good song about feeling bad in LA. The heat is the burnout, the heartbreak is the point. 3:12, out now.
She comes to it from Atlanta by way of Los Angeles, three albums in: Mattiel in 2017, Satis Factory in 2019, Georgia Gothic in 2022, plus US arena dates with Jack White in 2018. In 2022 she sold most of what she owned and moved to a small medieval Italian town on a mountain. She calls it the freest she has felt, and the reason there is new music at all.
“'Heartbreak Heatwave' is a feel-good song about feeling bad in LA. I wrote it after seeing enough of Silver Lake's bar culture and the exclusive Marmont parties. Everyone's competing for attention, most conversations are meaningless, and everyone is always looking for a way to use everyone else.”
The track is an upbeat stomper with Laurel Canyon in its bones, a strange place for a lyric this sore to sit. She wrote it after seeing enough of Silver Lake's bar culture and the Marmont parties: everyone competing for attention, conversations that mean nothing, people looking for a way to use each other. The warmth of the arrangement makes the sourness land harder. The voice is full and assertive, with no apology in it.
It is for anyone who took the sneer of Georgia Gothic over its ballads, and for anyone who has left a party early and felt better for it. What does not work is the size of the target. The swipe takes in a whole city's worth of people, and three minutes of stomp leaves no room to pick one out.
Call it a 3.5. A good song with a real grudge in it, sharper about the grudge than about the tune. She plays the George Tavern in London on November 16th. One night, a small room.
