New York-native Mila Culpa returns with her blissfully crunchy and digital shoegaze on “Costume,” her third single of 2026. It blasts in with huge swells of guitar and synthesizers at times, but also knows when to be delicate and intimate, leaving the listener with only an acoustic guitar and the sound of Culpa’s voice.
Culpa has been gaining indie notoriety for her Instagram snippets of unreleased music, filming a Tascam tape recorder, and letting the music speak for itself. Two weeks before the song was released on streaming services, Culpa posted a clip to Instagram with the caption “Took a bunch of horse medicine and made this lol.”
“Costume” features lyrics regarding introspection, self doubt, and identity. “When I was wearing a costume/It slowly drove me mad/I told some lies just to get through/But that’s nothing new to them.” The song’s production is warm and distorted, marking what may be Culpa’s most lush production in her discography. The searing and pitch bent lead guitar is reminiscent of shoegaze pioneer Kevin Shields, but Culpa’s autotuned and pitched vocals—with backing vocals provided by Kennedy Mann—are modern, and part of a new wave of shoegaze music coming out of the East Coast.
In the verses, Culpa’s voice sits atop a bed of sparkling acoustic guitars and a drum machine, a sound that she has stayed consistent with since her first releases just last year. “Costume” is full of contrasts: digital ‘computer music’ effects run through cassette tape, somber music with sarcastic lyrics, and a brainrotted emoji as the album art.
With “Costume”, Mila Culpa is on her way to be among shoegaze peers TAGABOW or Feeble Little Horse. It’s unclear where this single sits in Culpa’s career, and if it may be leading to a larger project to be announced, but her catchy songwriting and lush production gets more interesting each release.
Graphic by Sawyer Harris