Los Angeles, California’s J MAU & THE KISS OFF emerge from what they lovingly call their “beloved hellhole” with their debut single “Poison,” out March 25. Founded in 2025 by Justin “J Mau” Maurer, longtime punk lifer and founder of Clorox Girls, Suspect Parts, L.A. Drugz, and Maniac, the project finds Maurer turning toward something darker and dustier without losing the bite that’s always defined him. “Poison” is a cinematic honky tonk murder ballad filtered through decades of West Coast punk history. It’s the first glimpse of a songwriter who’s always followed the feeling, even when it led somewhere uncomfortable.
Maurer’s story isn’t mythology. It’s messy and real. A CODA raised between Los Angeles and Bainbridge Island by a single Deaf mother, American Sign Language was his first language. Punk became his second. After surviving a turbulent childhood and helping put his abusive father in jail as a teenager, Maurer found autonomy in the underground. By fifteen he was booking shows and touring. By twenty he was releasing records and circling the globe with Clorox Girls. Along the way he built a parallel career as one of the country’s most respected ASL interpreters, working alongside prominent political figures like Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Joe Biden, stage interpreting for punk legends like Alice Bag and The Avengers, interpreting Deaf actor Troy Kotsur’s historic 2022 Academy Award acceptance speech, and appearing with Kotsur on Curb Your Enthusiasm. His life has always moved between worlds.
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After stints living in Madrid, London, and Baja California, and in the wake of a divorce that leveled him, Maurer found himself flat on his back in an East Hollywood apartment, cowboy boots still on, old country records spinning. Hank Williams. Buck Owens. Merle Haggard. Gram Parsons. Kris Kristofferson. Townes Van Zandt. He finally understood it. “Real country music is poetry,” Maurer says. “It’s about failure, heartbreak, and the tragic human condition. Music to laugh and cry and live and die by.” That rock-bottom clarity led him to write “Poison.”
Recorded at Savannah Studios in Boyle Heights with Ignacio “Iggy” Gonzalez and backed by Patrick “Butterworth” Vasquez and Kevin “Quake” Milner, the track moves like a slow-burning reckoning. Acoustic strum, restrained rhythm, and a haunted vocal that feels equal parts confession and warning. From his window in Pico Union, Maurer could hear children playing at the elementary school across the street. Listening to old country compilations full of doomed protagonists, he imagined himself as a man on the run whose days were numbered, watching that schoolyard and knowing he might never see it again. That’s where the line came from: “When will you see the children play / You never will again.” The refrain doesn’t comfort you. It circles back like a hard truth you can’t shake: “It’s got a way / That poison’s got a way / It’s got a say / It’s got the final say.”
The single arrives with an 8mm-shot video co-directed by Maurer’s former MANIAC bandmate Zache Davis and Marta Ribate Gracia-Davis. Grainy, sun-bleached, and edited with a careful hand, it plays like a spaghetti western fever dream, a corrido where the protagonist must confront how he’ll be remembered before the end comes calling. The artwork, designed by longtime collaborator Matthew “Snake” Davis, leans into vintage flash tattoo skulls and silent-film menace.
To bring the songs to life, Maurer assembled The Kiss Off: bassist Cynthia “Mickie Splits” Herrera of Kontrol Inc. and The Sacred instantly providing an elegant rhythmic and harmonic anchor; lead guitarist Jairo Gabriel of The Zinfandels, weaving honky tonk, OC surf, and ranchera flourishes into every note; and drummer Christopher “Crux” Michael of Guantanamo Baywatch, locked in with instinct and harmony vocals that cut through clean. The lineup feels distinctly Los Angeles, different neighborhoods, different backgrounds, different histories colliding in one room. Together they sit comfortably in the long L.A. tradition of bands who blurred punk and country before it had a name. From the ghosts of X and The Gun Club to Rank & File and the late-night mythology of Alvarado Street, this feels less like a costume change and more like someone leaning into what was already there. In the true spirit of collaboration, their unique alchemy has given them an opportunity to make their own mark on the collective consciousness of the rich cultural tapestry of Los Angeles and beyond. They seem to instinctively know that music brings collective joy in the face of collective doom. “Poison” does just that, washes over us with an ethereal wave of cinematic west coast desert bliss.
“Poison” feels less like a pivot and more like coming home to a different side of the same city. It carries the grit of a man who has toured the world, interpreted history in real time, survived heartbreak, and still believes in the redemptive power of a three-chord confession. J MAU & THE KISS OFF will be performing throughout Southern California this spring with plans for a West Coast run and European dates on the horizon. For now, “Poison” stands as a stark introduction: a reminder that Los Angeles has always loved both punk rock and honky tonk, and sometimes they are the same thing.
J MAU & THE KISS OFF Online
