Q&A: Laura Pieri Breathes New Life into the ‘Frankie’ Universe with “Flown Away”
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KIMBERLY KAPELA ☆
Photography Credit: Nat Goldie
EXPANDING THE WORLD OF ‘FRANKIE’ — For pop singer-songwriter Laura Pieri, storytelling has never stopped at lyrics—it lives in the texture of her production, the movement of her visuals and the emotional arc each song dares to trace. Her 2024 EP Frankie told the story of a woman reclaiming her voice after a season of silence, ending in the triumphant crescendo of “GODDESS ENERGY.” But as Pieri puts it, “That said, I’ve lived through that experience, and now I’m ready to move forward.” That shift in momentum birthed her new single, “Flown Away,” arriving as part of her forthcoming project, Frankie On The Dancefloor, an expanded edition of Frankie—featuring four brand new remixes and this electrifying original offering.
Inspired by the shimmering nostalgia of early house music, “Flown Away” was originally written during the Frankie sessions; it didn’t quite fit the project’s initial shape. “For a while, she was a misfit,” Pieri says. “Sonically, she didn’t quite fit with the rest of the project. But stepping away gave me the space to reimagine her. Frankie’s story wasn’t over, and ‘Flown Away’ felt like the perfect way to keep her spirit alive while pushing the sound forward.”
Now recontextualized in a post-Frankie world, the single signals a new era of movement—both musically and emotionally—for Pieri. Swapping sleek, introspective pop for a more dance floor-ready energy, “Flown Away” is a declaration of freedom through rhythm. “I love a more traditional pop sound, but lately, I just want to move—to dance!” Pieri says. “Leaving this song tucked away never felt right. Now, nearly a year after Frankie, it finally feels like the right time to share it.”
Released in May 2024, the Frankie EP arrived with a stunning short film, chronicling a woman reclaiming her voice and autonomy. It was a deeply personal release for Pieri, who at the time was considering leaving music behind altogether. What emerged instead was a fearless work of self-discovery and perseverance. Co-written with an all-female team and executive produced by Skyler Cocco, Frankie was more than a comeback—it was a reintroduction.
“Flown Away” now acts as a thematic encore to that journey—an ode to letting go, moving on, and dancing through the next chapter. If Frankie was the reclamation, Frankie On The Dance Floor is the ritual. “In my mind, she’s a little witch, making a ritual for herself,” Pieri muses. “She’s out in a field with all her favorite flowers, burning it all down—not out of rage, but out of power. Out of release. A final celebration. A closing spell. I’ve done what I came to do—and now, I dance.”
With “Flown Away,” Pieri isn’t just tying a bow on a past chapter—she’s setting it ablaze in the most radiant, self-possessed way possible. It's not goodbye. It's transcendence.
Photography Credit: Nat Goldie
LUNA: Welcome back and thank you for talking to Luna. It's super exciting to have you back since the last time we talked about your EP Frankie. I would love to catch up and see how life has been treating you and what have you been up to since the last time we talked.
LAURA: I graduate in a month. I recently took my graduation photos, and the moment I put on the cap, gown, and stole—seeing the degree I've worked so hard for—something hit me. I wanted to cry. I’ve always been an academic at heart. I love research, I love writing papers. But this degree has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to complete. It took everything out of me. Getting to the finish line feels surreal. Two years doesn’t sound like a long time, but it flew by—and in that time, so much of my life has changed. The way I carry myself professionally, the way I think, how I navigate the world—it’s all been shaped by this journey. I really poured myself into it.
At the same time, outside of academics, I’ve been diving into my creative side. In what little free time I had, I started making a lot of music. I’ve been writing, producing, and shaping my sound to be more dance-floor friendly. I’ve even taken some of that music to a few of my favorite choreographers and, through that, I started dancing again. I danced when I was younger, but it had been a long time since I did it professionally. Reconnecting with that part of myself has been healing. In a way, Frankie was always a narrative of reconnection—and now, I feel like I’m really embodying that. I’m stepping back into my body, into my joy, and allowing myself to prioritize me again.
LUNA: A year has passed since the release of Frankie. Looking back, how do you feel about the project now, and what stands out to you the most about the experience of creating it?
LAURA: It’s hard for things not to feel old—even when they’re not. Sometimes, even before a project is fully made or released, it already exists in this in-between space, like it’s suspended in a kind of nowhere. I love Frankie very dearly. It’s a project I’m incredibly proud of. Looking back, I’m grateful for how it came together, and I wouldn’t change it. But part of me also feels like—girl, I love you, but I think I’ve told your story. I think she’s said what she came here to say. Frankie On The Dance Floor feels like her final chapter—her encore. And with this, I think she’s done what she was meant to do.
LUNA: You have released your newest single “Flown Away” and it's a bold departure from your sound on Frankie. What inspired the shift toward a more dance-driven sound, and how did the song evolve in a way that reflects your artistic growth?
LAURA: Emotionally, Frankie was a meditation on my experience. I didn’t want everything to feel so big and dramatic—I wanted it to feel intimate. It was about the feeling, about taking the story and holding it gently in the palm of your hand and saying, ‘This is what Frankie was for me.’ I’ve always been a sucker for big production—I love a big sound—but Frankie wasn’t about that. It was about being present with the story.
That said, I’ve lived through that experience, and now I’m ready to move forward. The story of Frankie is important, and I’m proud of it, but now I want to dance. “Flown Away” feels like the natural continuation of that shift. It was originally supposed to be on Frankie, but narratively, it occupied the same emotional space as “Come Clean.” I knew I didn’t need both—“Come Clean” felt truer to Frankie’s arc at the time. But “Flown Away” was a track I always wanted to return to. It’s strong. It starts small—with that opening line, “Everything was black and white”—and you already know exactly where you are. Then it builds into that explosive chorus: ‘I’m not even sorry that I’ve flown away.’ We made three versions of it. One was hyperpop, but then I realized I’d been listening to a lot of early house music. There’s something happening right now—a cultural comeback of floating, euphoric house music. Music that makes you feel like you’re flying. And once I understood what “Flown Away” was doing, Frankie On The Dance Floor became the obvious next step. It felt like the story’s true ending.
Where Frankie ends in “GODDESS ENERGY,” in a moment of celebration, Frankie On The Dance Floor takes that joy and sets it on fire. In my mind, she’s a little witch, making a ritual for herself. She’s out in a field with all her favorite flowers, burning it all down—not out of rage, but out of power. Out of release. A final celebration. A closing spell. I’ve done what I came to do—and now, I dance.
LUNA: With the expanded edition of Frankie featuring new remixes alongside “Flown Away,” how do you see these remixes enhancing the original EP? Was there a specific vision you had for how they would complement the themes of the project?
LAURA: I’ve never really done remixes before, except for this one quick mix I made during lockdown. It was COVID, I was in my house, and everyone was experimenting with music in that wavelength. That was my first real experience with remixing, and even then, I wasn’t thinking too much of it. But I think I’m growing, and how I define myself as an artist is changing.
I had never done anything remotely close to dance music. House music, deep house—those were genres I loved listening to, but never imagined myself stepping into creatively. Now, suddenly, I am. I’m actually going to my first Coachella this weekend, which is wild. Nothing about the desert sounds appealing to me, but the second I saw Lady Gaga and Megan Thee Stallion on the lineup, I was like, I’ll brace the heat. And then Charli XCX—Brat was monumental for me. I’m so excited to see DJs this time around, because I’ve been consuming that kind of music nonstop lately.
That’s usually how it starts for me. A sign that I’m ready to start making something is when I can’t stop consuming it. I was listening to so much DJ music, so much house—it just made sense to explore it creatively. I called up my main collaborator—he’s been with me through almost every project over the last eight years—and I told him that I want to make remixes. I also told him I wanted to be super nit picky about them. We spent a couple weeks just talking about direction and vision.
We wanted it to feel floaty. That was the word. He knows exactly what that means. We’d say things like, ‘make it more muddy,’ or ‘it needs to sound like a feeling,’ and somehow, that makes total sense between us. Of course, the dream is to eventually collaborate with real DJs and people who live in that world, but since this is all so new to me, I wanted to do this project in-house. With a record like this, it felt right to keep it close. I’ll explore other options as time goes on—careers are long, and I’m just getting started.
Photography Credit: Nat Goldie
LUNA: I would love to touch more on the creative process behind Frankie On The Dancefloor. How did a typical writing and recording session look like for you?
LAURA: Usually, it starts with me and a voice note. Or a scribble in my Notes app. Or Josh YXSH—will send me a track he’s already started. He’s been working with me for so long now that he’s gotten really good at writing in my voice. Sometimes he’ll have a verse or a chorus already laid down, and then he’ll send it over, I’ll open it in Ableton, record some ideas, and from there we build. He’ll come in, sit at the piano, loop something, or pull up a track—and then it just starts flowing.
I love co-writing. Most of what I write alone is just for me, to sit with privately. But when it comes to building something like Frankie, collaboration was everything. I started that project with Skyler Cocco, and I’ve never seen someone work so fast. I was genuinely impressed. She’s taking up space in an industry that doesn’t make room for people like her—less than 2% of music producers are women. That stat alone tells you everything that’s broken in the system. But Skyler produces, writes, and performs her own work—and she does it incredibly. Through her, I was introduced to Libby and Desi, who are two of my favorite artists to this day.
For Frankie, I had this big narrative vision—I knew what I wanted each song to represent. And sometimes, being the person in the room with the idea can move a session forward more than being the person with the best melody. It’s one thing to walk into a session and say, ‘so what are we writing today?’ and it’s another to walk in and say, ‘this is the story.’ That’s what I try to do. I come in with ideas. We bounce things around. We’d do a song a day.
“GODDESS ENERGY” was one of those days. Skyler brought in Libby and Desi for that one, and you can feel their spirit in the song. It’s big. It’s fun. And it’s still my favorite song to perform live—mostly because it’s the one people sing back to me, which is the wildest and most affirming feeling. It has that mantra energy—‘I don’t care what you think of me.’ It’s playful, but powerful.
After we made the demos, I just left them and let them sit in my hard drive for months. I really believe in that—letting things breathe. I needed to live a little life away from Frankie before I could come back and finish her story. When I did, I heard everything differently. Some songs needed to be darker. Others needed all new vocals. And that’s when I realized “Flown Away” wasn’t going to make the record. At first, I really wanted it on the tracklist. I actually thought it would be “Flown Away” instead of “Come Clean.” But when I came back with fresh ears, I saw what “Come Clean” was doing narratively—it held a very specific space. “Flown Away” just didn’t make sense in that moment, so I shelved it. I didn’t touch it for six months, not until Frankie was out in the world. When I finally came back to it, I was like, ‘oh my god. I do love you.’
LUNA: Your music has always been paired with strong visuals, and your aesthetic choices are really intentional and strong nods to feminine historical figures. How would you describe your personal aesthetic, and how has it influenced the visual storytelling for Frankie On The Dancefloor?
LAURA: As I started preparing myself to be on stage more, I found myself constantly clawing at my references—like when you’ve already got a scratch and you just keep picking at it until it’s this open wound. I realized I needed to give some of these icons room to breathe. God knows Prince doesn’t want me knocking on his door again. He’s probably like, ‘girl, go pick somebody else. Give me a break.’ So I had to ask myself—Who am I doing this for? And why? And when I really sat with that question, I felt this strong pull toward Stevie Nicks. Not just musically, but spiritually—there’s something in the way she performs that embodies this sensation of being completely free. That’s what I’ve been chasing.
My team thinks I’m completely unhinged because I have to sing barefoot now. It’s a thing. Sessions are noticeably different if I have socks on. I like to be grounded—literally. I sit on the floor. I let my hair do what it wants. I’ve been wearing it more natural lately, which is a big shift for me. I intentionally didn’t go get it done, because I wanted to feel more like myself. I’ve been watching a lot of Stevie’s performances from the 70s. There’s this one of her singing “Rhiannon” where she completely loses herself on stage—and I felt that in my bones. That kind of wild, uncontained energy, I want that. Not to imitate it, but to let it remind me that I’m allowed to be that free.
There's a Brazilian artist called Rita Lee and I love her energy. I have felt pulled by her and really decided to go read more about her, listen to her music and have her book. There’s a level of darkness to her story—and the way she approaches that darkness with such matter-of-factness really struck me. That’s what I connect to. I hate when people try to pretend the darkness isn’t there. I embrace all of the dark and the bad inside of me because that’s what gives clarity and space to my light. I need the dark. Maybe even more than I need the light. It's a contrast—I’m really big on that. I started reading Rita’s biography, watching her interviews and studying her movement onstage. There’s something different about how certain people move—like, it’s in the body language. I can’t even fully explain it, but you feel it. You know when someone’s channeling something real, not just performing it.
It reminded me of Prince, but in the opposite way. For Prince, it’s all about control. Precision. He’s one of my biggest inspirations—I use purple constantly throughout my visuals and motifs because of him. But I’ve never fully felt worthy of that inspiration, for obvious reasons. Lately I’ve been like, I love you, but I need to come back to you when I’ve grown a little more—when I can create in service of you, instead of just pulling from you.
There’s something so sincere about her journey—and the way she explores the idea of names. Names carry so much meaning. I have characters too, and that connection—the act of naming and shaping identity—really resonated with me. So for this final chapter of the project, it’s become all about physicality. Not just what’s happening up here [points to head], but what’s happening in here [points to chest]. It’s about the body—how it holds emotion, how it releases. Lately in rehearsals, I’ve been making my team do improv warm-ups, shaking everything out. It seems silly, but the difference is palpable. I feel grounded. I feel more connected to my femininity through movement—something I’ve only recently unlocked. It’s unfamiliar, and it’s scary in a way, but it’s also something I have to explore.
This moment—this project—feels like it exists for that. At first, it was about saying what I needed to say. Now, it’s about letting it wash over me. Letting it live in the body. Letting my hair down. Shaking it loose. Feeling it all.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the wild woman. That archetype. That fear. It’s something talked about in the book Women Who Run With the Wolves—how society fears the untamable woman. The woman who doesn’t want to be domesticated. God forbid she doesn’t want to get married or have kids—suddenly she’s a threat. I think people conflate “wild” with “free” a lot. There’s overlap, sure—but I don’t know that I’d call myself free. Not yet. I still live within limitations—some I put on myself without even realizing it. But this—this work, this movement, this music—is one way I’ve found to break through one more layer of that cage. I’ve entered into that space. I’m letting it unfold.
I’ve always said this, and I stand by it: the most human thing in the world—the closest thing to a human being—is a book. People always say it’s a dog. Or they’ll say it’s music. But music is divine. Music is closer to God. Books? Books are us. Stories are human. I love the storytelling, the way it reclaims the old tales and gives them back to women. There’s something to be gained from that and that cracked something open in me.
And for me, my personal parallel is mermaids. I think we have sirens and then we have mermaids, and they're characterized very differently in folklore and in stories, but it's the same thing,
LUNA: What is a dream artist to collaborate with on Frankie On The Dancefloor?
LAURA: Shygirl.
LUNA: How are you feeling in this current era of your career and what does the rest of the year look like for you that you would love to share with Luna?
LAURA: Right now, I feel very budding—like things are just starting to sprout and I’m aware of it. I think for a long time, I was so focused on chasing this big dream, this big career, that I never really stopped to smell the flowers. I know it sounds cliché, but it’s true. Lately, I’ve been trying to sit in the small moments. To actually revel in them.
Last year, I played my first few shows in a while—just small rooms, maybe 20 people—and I loved the hell out of it. Every second. And I know that one day, if I’m lucky enough to be selling out stadiums, I’ll miss those rooms. The intimacy. The way you can feel every breath in the room. So I’m trying to be really present in that, because that’s the kind of thing you can’t recreate.
We’re not just competing with other artists anymore—we’re competing with everything. With the million other ways someone can choose to spend their time, when people choose to come to a show, or stream a song, or show up in any way—that’s not something I take lightly. It means something. It’s become this quiet but powerful source of motivation for me. There’s still so much work ahead. I’m just planting seeds and trusting that the right opportunities will come when the time is right. And in the meantime—I’m here. I’m grateful. I’m blooming.
Photography Credit: Nat Goldie
