Mykki Blanco pays homage to his beloved New York City with the latest single from his new album, CAFE PARADISO  (Transgressive), coming September 9, 2026. “NYC DOGS” is out today, following the videos for “Little Feet” and “Butt Sex.”

Bursting with kinetic, funk-infused energy, “NYC DOGS”, which features as a First Play with Lauren Laverne today on BBC Radio 6, serves as another perfect example of Mykki at his most playful, charismatic and fiercely self assured. Propelled by the gritty crunch of overdriven electric guitar chords, the track expertly blends instrumental unpolished garage rock grit with enthusiastic blues rhythm, with Blanco commanding listeners to “stick out [their] tongues” like the “bad dogs” they are, and repeatedly invoking the city which inspired and helped actualise this project.

“I chose to record CAFE PARADISO in New York because I wanted to come home for a bit,” Blanco explains, “New York is where I ran away to when I was 16 … where I first began writing music after dropping out of Parsons School of Design, where I published my first book of poetry, and where I launched my career on the underground scene 13 years ago.” He continues: “CAFE PARADISO is a record for city kids. It’s heavily inspired by New York, but the New York of now, which isn’t parochial but transatlantic. CAFE PARADISO is also global. It’s a series of vignettes that speak to the lives lived inside the concrete jungle.”

“I love creating music but I’ve never liked the idea of being a one-trick pony”, Blanco explains. “I need to check some things off my ‘Life List.’” Recorded in New York and shaped in collaboration with longtime creative partner and producer Drew “FaltyDL” Lustman, CAFE PARADISO moves fluidly between styles and scenes, pulling together fragments of dance music, art pop, underground club culture and genre-splicing experimentation into what Blanco describes as a “three-act play” or “a festival album”, citing references as diverse as Saint Etienne, The Silver Apples, and Towa Tei.

At its core, however, CAFE PARADISO is an album about stillness, observation and the quiet intensity of being alone in public. “It’s not a point A-to-B record, or a pre-game record”, Blanco says. “It’s an album about enjoying your own company”.

CAFE PARADISO does not mark a rupture so much as a refinement in the career of Mykki Blanco. Drawing together years of experimentation across music, performance, and visual art, which has seen him collaborate with artists including Arca, Basement Jaxx, Charli XCX, Jamila Woods, Blood Orange, Kelsey Lu, Michael Stipe, Anohni,and Jónsi, this album arrives at a point of transient clarity – it is a confident statement of intent, positioning Blanco not simply as a shape-shifter, but as an artist in full command of his present form.