After spending 2022 delving into the lush, neoclassical avant-jazz soundscapes of Pigments, her critically acclaimed collaborative record with Spencer Zahn, Dawn Richard returns her visionary eye to kaleidoscopic, genre-straddling pop music with “Bubblegum,” a standalone single that arrives worldwide April 12, 2023, on Merge Records.

Described by Richard as a “pure dance-pop banger,” “Bubblegum” sees the New Orleans–born musician, multimedia artist, animator, dancer, director, model, and entrepreneur slip comfortably into the King Creole persona she first introduced in 2021’s Second Line.

She explains: “Leaning back into the Electro Revival era, I wanted to remind people that King Creole is just getting started. The preface to the second installment of the Electro Revival, ‘Bubblegum’ is a cocky candy-coated conundrum. Full of sass that only a New Orleans King can conjure, this yummy multi-genre single is just a taste of what’s to come.”

As a founding member of Danity Kane, and later with Diddy’s Dirty Money, Richard has explored the ins and outs of commercial pop music. As a solo artist, she opted to self-release her music; over the span of six critically acclaimed full-length albums, she treats Louisiana Creole culture, New Orleans bounce, and Southern Swag as elemental, allowing her to weave in and out of house, footwork, R&B, and more. As she proudly proclaimed on Second Line: “I am the genre.” Her most recent album, Pigments, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and producer Spencer Zahn, is an orchestral fusion of neoclassical, ambient, and jazz that has received much praise since its October 2022 release.

In addition to her prolific musical output, Richard is active in other fields. She works in creative direction and creator partnerships with Adult Swim; she is passionate about emerging technologies as well as the intersection of tech and art.

This past October, she was the Artist in Residence at NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, marking the first time the Institute has hosted a visiting artist for a full week of programming.