Queen Quail announces debut EP Narcissus with reflective lead track Last Night

Debut EP to draw on shimmering indie pop and plainspoken folk

Berlin via Milwaukee artist Queen Quail has announced her debut EP Narcissus, due for release in November. The six-track project offers a meditative, emotionally open exploration of resilience, identity, memory, and transformation, blending shimmering production with quiet resolve.

Produced by David Thornton, with mixing by Michael Kümper and mastering by Huntley Miller (Bon Iver, Sylvan Esso), Narcissus draws on dreamy textures and frank lyricism to navigate themes of longing, philosophy, and homecoming. Speaking about the writing process, Queen Quail (Kirstin Edwards) said, “Writing these songs was my way of trying to figure out who I was becoming, and how to use my own voice without losing myself.”

The songs took shape during a period of personal upheaval, with Edwards reflecting on the influence of literature, psychoanalysis, and memory. “Around that time I was also reading a lot of Freud, Lacan, and philosophy, which definitely slipped into the lyrics and the way I thought about memory, love, and the unconscious, and how capitalism plays into this,” she said. “What started as a very private practice slowly turned into a kind of reckoning with the choices I’d made in my twenties.”

New single Last Night, released today, leads the project. Carried by a delicate guitar riff and soft vocal cadence, the track explores mortality and the fragility of embodiment. Recalling its origins, Edwards said, “It emerged from a memory I have of being close to falling asleep and then hearing the phone ring and my mom getting the news that her father had passed away. It’s also about how hard it is to have a body, and about the dream world versus the real, embodied world.” She developed the song further following a show with Dan English of Porches, who encouraged her to take up touring guitar work.

Narcissus also includes tracks titled Grace, I Met God, and Mud, with Edwards describing the project as “both a mirror and a map, looking back at doubt and transformation, but also pointing toward what comes next.”

Queen Quail’s artistic alias was inspired by a moment in Berlin’s botanical gardens, where she encountered a “Zwergwachtel” (dwarf quail). Struck by its quiet focus, Edwards felt the small bird mirrored her own nature: shy, introspective, but energetic. That duality is embedded in her music—balancing restraint with presence, and vulnerability with precision.