Fresh from the release of her eagerly anticipated and warmly received 2021 EP, Paranoia, pop-punk polymath Maggie Lindemann felt the creative bug gnawing at her heels; eager to create – no matter what came of the creation process – she booked a week's worth of studio time with her trusted team of cowriters and let the songs begin to flow, with the record taking shape over the course of the months that followed. Adrenaline, positive feedback from listeners of the EP, a newfound comfort with her collaborators, and "genuinely the best headspace I've ever found myself in" contributed to the 15-song album she's now ready to put out for the world to hear. "I was really on myself about making sure every song was cohesive, but had its own individual flare to it," she says. "My only goal was to never half-ass anything I did."

Building on the sharpened songwriting and singularly honed-in sounds she'd established on Paranoia, Maggie spent that week building the foundation of her debut studio album, Suckerpunch, a body of work that chronicles a journey of self-discovery and actualization. "It's the journey from being upset to being angry to being hopeful – a hopefulness I want listeners to know exists for them, too," she says. It's also the rare narrative record that's songs also stand as strongly alone as they do in sequenced order. "I was still in the Paranoia headspace, and I didn't want to leave it, but as we made these songs, you can hear me growing and going deeper than I ever have before," Maggie notes. "Even if some of the melodies changed or production elements took new form, a lot of Suckerpunch is as we originally wrote and intended it – songs that showcase the new version of who I've always wanted to be."

On Suckerpunch, Maggie folds in "hyperpop meets glam goth" sounds that she stumbled across on TikTok and in new (and old!) music she swaddled herself in during the pandemic, including Evanescence's early ‘00s hits and up-and-coming Singaporean singer Yeule's incorporation of glitching into her work. The album name, she says, came to her soon after. "It's an unexpected punch, a blow you didn't see coming," she says. "When I was making this, I had those blows in my own life; when I listened to the album back from start to finish, I realized the entire thing was a sucker punch – for myself, for my fans – and I knew it had to be the title."

Suckerpunch also takes all that devoted Maggie Lindemann fans know and love and supplements it with new levels of sophistication to her songwriting, storytelling, and singing. Early album cuts like "She Knows It," a throbbing anthem about same-sex attraction, delve into "entirely new territory for me," she says. "I was shifting my focus. I was so used to writing about failed, toxic relationships, so when I went to do that on this album, I pushed myself to write about them in new ways, and to make sure I was writing authentically about where I am today, too – and where I want to be going."