Mike Baggetta - Stephen Hodges - Mike Watt

mssv has a new album out called "Human Reaction" on the BIG EGO Records label you can order at the link below... Our 2nd studio album features all new songs that we played throughout our Haru Tour 2022 and we'll be hitting the road again to celebrate. The mssv Aki Tour 2023 kicks off Sept. 5...

Our 1st special edition 7" release, recorded completely in lockdown isolation, on the Italian Improved Sequence label came out in September 2020 and is available now from the label directly. 

Our 2nd special edition 7" release, recorded completely in lockdown isolation, is The Scott Aicher EP - a very special 4 song micro-opera based on new original artwork by Scott Aicher, included in the packaging, and features Petra Haden joining us on violin and voice. This is out now on Nomad Eel Records, available at our new Bandcamp page, or by scrolling down to the bottom of this site.

Our 3rd special edition 7" release, also recorded in lockdown, is out now on Striped Light Records. mssv Meets Nels Cline is a collaboration between mssv and guitarist Nels Cline featuring one song by Nels and one song by mssv guitarist Mike Baggetta. Comes with handmade packaging and handset letterpress design by Bryan Baker of Stukenborg Press, as well as an assortment of special prints with text (poems?) from one of the members of the band. Which print will you get? No one knows!

You can check out all of our upcoming releases on our new Bandcamp page, or by scrolling down to the bottom of this site.

Premier Guitar writes about mssv and their guitarist Mike Baggetta

Brooklyn Vegan writes about mssv's POSTPONED Haru Tour 2020 around Big Ears Festival

Rock and Roll Globe premieres videos of Mike Watt's Liberty Calls! & No One Says Old Man (To The Old Man) from mssv's Live Flowers album out Dec. 1

JazzTimes Magazine premieres "The Pink Room" from mssv's Live Flowers album out Dec. 1

mssv is releasing their second studio album Human Reaction in their typical style: with a 58-show tour in the U.S. and parts of Canada. The band, composed of guitarist Mike Baggetta, Stephen Hodges on drums and mike watt on bass, creates music that is a heretofore unimagined hybrid of a punk power-trio and a dreamy experimental rock band, though they prefer the term “post-genre.” Human Reaction is being released on BIG EGO Records as a digital download, 12” LP vinyl, and via streaming platforms on September 1.

Their latest full-length album finds the oddly memorable hooks of their noir-tinged adventure music with a lot more vocals from the Main Steam Stop Valve leader Baggetta, adding more personality than ever before, alongside his bandmates, Hodges and watt, who also share in the vocal duties throughout the album.

While working out the new music on the previous mssv tour in 2022 (48 shows in 48 days to celebrate their self-titled debut), Baggetta felt it important to take the step of singing his own words every night, rather than assigning them to anyone else, with a lot of support and encouragement from Stephen and mike.

Recorded mostly on May Day immediately following that last tour, Human Reaction traverses a deeply broad sonic landscape, as expected from this nearly unclassifiable group, though with even deeper twists and turns. With inventively churning drum textures from Hodges (an instantly identifiable sound honed in his days with Tom Waits and David Lynch) and the full-steam-ahead all-in attitude from watt, (as he’s displayed throughout his storied career with MINUTEMEN, fIREHOSE, and The Stooges), there is still the impression of “pressure, combustion, power, and hissing clouds of sonic poetry,” as Premier Guitar said. Also evident is the more fearless exploring that comes from a band that has spent a lot of time together crafting their vision, as well as making room for guests like J Mascis, Petra Haden and Nels Cline on some of their previous releases.

Baggetta has had the pleasure to work all over the world with a wide range of visionary musicians across many generations including David Torn, Jim Keltner, Nels Cline, Psychic Temple, Jeff Coffin, Henry Kaiser, Petra Haden, Rev. Fred Lane, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Joseph C. Philips’ Numinous with Imani Uzuri, Viktor Krauss, Jerome Harris, David Wax Museum, Jon Irabagon, Eivind Opsvik and Ruth Brown among many others. 

Even though Baggetta wrote all the songs specifically for these bandmates to play, there’s no telling which way the band will turn at any given moment, a proposition that becomes a promise when they break down and reassemble these songs live, with an instinct for restraint and an openness to anarchy.