“Hi, it’s Maria,” begins María Zardoya in a voice message, her voice low against a slow instrumental. “Welcome to Not for Radio, my alternate reality.”
Zardoya, the lead singer of the Marías, announced her debut solo project in a series of posts across social media Wednesday, while sharing her inquisitive voice note on Spotify with the title “Message 1” alongside the album title. “I wanted to explore on my own what it meant to love and to lose. And I keep asking myself the question: Is love worth the pain?” she continues to detail. “If there’s a pain that only love can cause — the ache of someone’s absence, of knowing that they once lived there inside your home, tangible and tender — but now reside only inside your memory. What do you think, Is love worth the pain? I’m ready to find out.”
Elsewhere, Zardoya shared a photo of herself in a white T-shirt with text declaring, “I made a solo project,” and another image of her in a black shirt that read “Not for Radio.” In the caption, she assured fans that “the band will be here forever,” adding, “i love making music as the marías, and nothing will ever change that.”
Her desire to “challenge” herself, however, led her “to make a project that resonated with me in a different way.” Offering insight into the new venture, she wrote, “there are layers to who we all are as individuals, and this is another layer of me, another flower in the garden.”
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The theme of growth was further explored in a separate video shared to Instagram under an account featuring her new endeavor’s name. The clip shows a sprouting seed before cutting to Maria basked in red light as she reaches upward while a snippet from her voice message plays, with the addition of her declaring, “A seed has been planted.”
The Marías released their second studio album, Submarine, last year, which sent them on an extended tour around North America. The Marías will conclude their trek on Sept. 24 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
