Jena Malone Is The Rock Star You Think She Is

She is an axe-wielding warrior from a dystopian future. She is a time-traveler’s paradoxical girlfriend. She is a singer of made-up languages.

She is Jena Malone, and along with collaborator Lem Jay Ignacio, she is also The Shoe. Or, one half of it, at least — likely the sole. Or, maybe the laces.

On June 3, The Shoe will release I’m OK — its first full-length album since forming in 2008 (pre-orders are available here). It’s an intimate, delicate, ethereal album full of loose whispers and whirly keyboards. The tunes are imbued with a sensation of eavesdropping on whimsical pillow talk or reading a lost, secret diary. It’s not what you would expect from someone whose most recent job involves dismembering people in The Hunger Games.

We talked to the duo at Ignacio’s garage studio in Los Angeles, where the album was recorded — aside from the parts they did outside on the edge of a cliff, overlooking a canyon, because, you know, she's Jena Malone.