Mannequin Pussy just want the space to scream

By Raina Douris, Kimberly Junod

Published March 1, 2024 at 7:28 AM PST

There has probably been at least one moment in your life when you've gotten so frustrated, angry and overwhelmed that you felt the urge to scream. But when you want to scream, where do you go?

Do you go into your car? Do you go scream into a pillow? For Mannequin Pussy frontperson Missy Dabice, she went to the stage. In this session, Dabice talks about how she started the band looking for emotional catharsis and how that remains a vital part of their music even as her songwriting craft has developed.

She also talks about what it's like to have your band start to break out in your 30s, and about her life before Mannequin Pussy: Her diagnosis with cancer as a teenager and her upbringing in the church, which partly inspired the title track of the band's new album, I Got Heaven.

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Dabice also talks about the mutual respect between the band and their audience; it's something we saw firsthand when she took the time to talk to every single fan who wanted to say hello after the live performance you'll hear today.

This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Kimberly Junod. The web story was created by Miguel Perez. Our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.

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Raina Douris

Raina Douris, an award-winning radio personality from Toronto, Ontario, comes to World Cafe from the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), where she was host and writer for the daily live, national morning program Mornings on CBC Music. She was also involved with Canada's highest music honors: hosting the Polaris Music Prize Gala from 2017 to 2019, as well as serving on the jury for both that award and the Juno Awards. Douris has also served as guest host and interviewer for various CBC Music and CBC Radio programs, and red carpet host and interviewer for the Juno Awards and Canadian Country Music Association Awards, as well as a panelist for such renowned CBC programs as Metro Morning, q and CBC News.

Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).