Singer, writer, and rapper Dessa released “Bombs Away,” the second installment of her new monthly single series IDES. “‘Bombs Away’ is about a feeling of surrender, leaning in and letting go,” Dessa says “As a control enthusiast, uncertainty and ambiguity unsettle me. But this past year wasn’t designed to cater to our preferences. I recorded the demo for this one in Minneapolis, in the middle of a very hard 2020.”

IDES is the product of collaborations between artists working from their home studios across the country, trading sound files, snapshots, and voice memos. In a world without touring, Dessa says, the song series is designed to deliver music in regular installments — new art to look forward to every month. The title of the series nods to the ancient Roman calendar, ides being a day that falls roughly in the middle of each month. 

Independent of IDES, Dessa recently released the song “Who’s Yellen Now?,” a Hamilton-style ode to the U.S.’s first female Treasury Secretary. When Joe Biden announced Janet Yellen as his pick for Secretary of the Treasury, he joked that Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda should write a musical about her. Public radio show Marketplace took the baton from there and asked Dessa (who was a contributor to The Hamilton Mixtape) to think about what that might sound like. “Who’s Yellen Now?” was born, and Janet Yellen herself has recognized the track, tweeting “your tune is money.”