How did a Halloween lyric prompt become a 34-track musical with a living Puppet Master and one very square book? Tea & Mickey pull back the velvet curtain in this behind-the-scenes look at Masquerade of Shadows.

It started as a demo. A goal. A whispered dream. Then a flurry of late-night Zoom calls, playlists passed like notes in class, encouragement sent in long texts, half-baked ideas for record labels and comics and healing. It was never meant to be a band, or maybe it was. We just didn’t know it yet.

We’ve spent this summer chasing down artist profiles and trying to exist across platforms we barely understand. Truthfully, when this all began, our biggest dream was simply to make a demo and start a label. Sharing our bios? Not on the original to-do list. But here we are. Half-baked and ready to roll, released into the wild on Tea’s half-birthday, July 7 (she’s officially 55.5 now), and we decided that’s as good a time as any. We’re not big on social media anymore, we pr