Sad13 – 1331
Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz is one of the most prolific songwriters and critically lauded guitarists of her time. Today, her electropop project and alter ego Sad13 returns to announce 1331, a 13-track mixtape of “1 minute long-ish songs,” and the first Sad13 project in over 5 years since 2020’s acclaimed Haunted Painting. Rooted in her home base of Philly, Dupuis made 1331 totally DIY, the sole performer and recording engineer on one of her projects for the first time in fifteen years. The mixtape will be out on July 10th via Exploding In Sound Records, the label that released Speedy Ortiz’s Sports EP in 2012.
Most of 1331’s writing came in spring 2024, a patch Dupuis calls a “mini nervous breakdown.” Speedy Ortiz records are often personal-as-political, but 2023’s Rabbit Rabbit dealt with childhood abuse. Promoting it felt brutal, and she realized she needed further processing, distinct from songwriting. “Making music is magic, a hurts-so-bad-it’s-good potion,” she says. “But therapy is different, and I didn’t wanna mine it for more art.” She made it a goal to write daily songs around a minute long, a rewarding game to relieve challenges posed in counseling, and trained her lens and lyrical subject matter on her community in Philadelphia rather than her own biography. The Sad13 tracking process stalled, however, after a bicycle accident shattered Dupuis’ elbow in June 2024, requiring reconstructive surgeries and a year of rehab. After twenty-plus years of playing, Rolling Stone had recently included Dupuis in their Greatest Guitarists of All Time, and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was displaying her guitar. Suddenly, doctors warned she might never play again. Grueling training put her back on tour three months later, but nerve damage kept her off the computer, postponing Sad13 recording. “My body didn’t have the juice,” she recalls. “But tracking in little bursts over more time gave me broader influences.”
The resulting and hard-won mixtape is 1331, which melds mindsets and melodies across time: whimsical fun amid noisy fury, sophisticated balance shaping wild catharsis. It’s concise, delightfully weird music, a catchy rush that’s distinctly Sad13. To highlight that, Dupuis shares the album’s three-track opener: the elegiac “I Am Now Completely Invisible,” which morphs JRPG chamber orchestration into wall-of-sound guitars; “Art Institute” with its Björkian groove that skewers colleges-as-corporations; and the industrial “Watermelon Manicure,” a response to the fearmongering and media framing around Gaza solidarity encampments, which comes with an accompanying self-directed music video.
Flipping through the photo book Protest Grim Reapers, Sadie Dupuis was struck by the versatility of Death. The cloak and scythe on a picket line looked grave but uncanny, even comic. Online, on tour, she saw deathly dissonance everywhere: in “journalistic doublespeak, politeness politics, and Big Tech’s censorship,” she elaborates. 1331, Sad13’s bubbling new suite, reports on mortality and duality; it expands Dupuis’s diverse discography with ambitious, otherworldly home recordings in the surreal spirit of the reaper she painted as cover art.
1331’s spark was comedian Jamie Loftus’s Sixteenth Minute, one of several podcast themes Dupuis has scored. “I obsess over short songs—jingles, interludes, anything truncated that rewards more listens,” she says. She cherishes this form’s experts: Guided By Voices, Tierra Whack, her former tourmate Mitski.
Though it’s her solo project, made entirely by Dupuis, Sad13 pursuits often follow collaborations; 2016 glitter-pop debut Slugger came after co-writes with Lizzo, while 2020’s maximalist Haunted Painting spotlit teamwork with other women engineers, like Sarah Tudzin (Illuminati Hotties) and Maryam Qudus (Spacemoth). And while Sad13 is historically a pop project, guitars aren’t gone—1331 boasts jazz voicings, feedbacking leads, no-wave skronk—but they are decentralized. Drums were a starting point, programmed entirely from samples, and Sad13 songs always pulse with synths, citing circuitry from Gary Numan to PinkPantheress. Dupuis interspersed field recordings (birds, clocks, a guided meditation), and prioritized nimble bass after seeing the Brandee Younger Trio. Though 2013 Speedy breakthrough Major Arcana foregrounded ‘90s-slacker speak-sing, Dupuis is extensively trained; she once toured internationally in a classical choir, and works backing vocal sessions in rap, folk, and rock. “I learned to sing in groups, and still learn from blending with others, so I brought those lessons here,” she says. In her home studio’s seclusion, she tapped bonus styles: whistle voice, shredding screams, operatic runs, across a huge range surpassing three octaves.
Since Sad13’s inception, it’s played live as a band, but the mixtape mindset made Dupuis eager to experiment alone. “I wanted to stoke chaos and plumb rabbit holes, not make my friends tidy after me,” she explains. She wrote, recorded and performed the album by herself in its entirety – playing guitars (electric, baritone, acoustic), bass, piano, synths, organ, percussion, drum programming, field recordings, and vocals – but she’s not without contributors: Emily Lazar, Sad13’s day-one mastering engineer (HAIM, Olivia Rodrigo), worked holistically, bringing boom to snares and nuance to subs. And Exploding In Sound, whose debut vinyl release was also Speedy’s first, is again her label. “I forever admire their curation and ethics. From Grass Is Green to Jobber, EIS presses my best buds’ records, and also my favorites,” she enthuses.
Dupuis is a poet with two treasured collections, and she brings literary analysis to the mixtape’s title: “1331 signifies palindromes, mirrors, warped balance,” she clarifies. “It’s a mash-up of two ages in the lyrics. The first, as in my alias ‘sad thirteen,’ represents teenage moodiness, while thirty-one bookmarks young adulthood, which brought me more radical clarity.”
Much like a grim reaper at a march, 1331 calls out foes in a winking costume, all with hope for future joy. Sixteen minutes of poignant music is a great place to start, and if that’s not long enough? “You can always hit repeat,” offers Dupuis.
Sad13 On Tour
7/9 – Brooklyn, NY @ Union Pool w/ New Idea Society, Russian Baths
7/10 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s w/ Hurry, Dina Hashem
7/11 – Malden, MA @ FACES w/ New Idea Society, Real Beaut
7/17 – virtual @ Blue Stoop – Verse Chorus Voice, a lyrics & songwriting masterclass
7/24 – Somerville, MA @ NICE, a fest w/ Krill, Downtown Boys, Dari Bay, Mal Devisa
#sad13