Based in Los Angeles, the trio met during college at the University of Southern California. They began working together in 2013 with Maskin and McPherson playing together on guitars and Gavin adding synth bass and vocals. Gavin and Maskin were music majors, while McPherson double-majored in narrative studies and American studies & ethnicity.(Stone, 2016) Maskin and McPherson were used to playing more ska and progressive rock music, but when they joined with Gavin the sound was more pop focused.(Stone, 2016)
The beginning of their partnership was an experiment to figure out what type of sound they wanted to create, in the end they chose hooky electronic pop. In June 2014, they self-released their EP, More Perfect, on Bandcamp and SoundCloud. It was very successful which led to them signing with RCA Records for the US and Columbia Records for the UK. Around that time, Gavin and McPherson had been dating for three years but broke up shortly after being signed.(Rogers, M. & Yang, B., 2022) In May 2016, RCA Records released the EP Loudspeaker. Their debut full-length album, About U, was released the next year on February 3, 2017.
Muna played at Lollapalooza for the first time in Chicago on July 2016. The same year they toured America with Grouplove and made their late-night network television debut on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on November 7.(Rettig, 2016) The next year, the band was Harry Styles's opening act for his North American and European tour dates. Additionally, their song "I Know a Place" was featured in The Carmilla Movie, which followed the original web series that was based on Le Fanu's novella of the same name. In 2018, Muna was featured playing "I Know a Place" live in the Netflix movie Alex Strangelove, which chronicles the sexual awakening of a teenage Alex Truelove.
In September 6, 2019, the band released their second album, Saves the World. Saves the World was a solid success and Metacritic gave the album a rating of 82 out of 100, which indicates "universal acclaim" (Metacritic, 2019) Following their London shows at the Village Underground, Muna announced that they would be returning to the UK for their Saves the World Tour in December 2019.
During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, MUNA was dropped by RCA for "not making enough money".(Bernstein,2022) Less than a full year later in May 2021, Muna signed with Phoebe Bridgers' record label Saddest Factory and then in September Muna released their single "Silk Chiffon" which features Bridgers.(Moore, 2019) Rolling Stone called it a "buoyant track with an uncharacteristically bright declaration of queer love."(Zemler, 2021) Muna later joined Kacey Musgraves's tour from January to February in 2022.
In March 2022, the band released their single "Anything But Me" and announced that their third studio album, Muna, would be released on June 24, 2022. The following month, they performed their new single on Ellen. The third single of the album, "Kind of Girl", was released later that year in April, alongside a Western-inspired music video.(Lavin,2022) Then the band performed the song on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon the following month. Muna became the band's first charting album on multiple charts around the world. The same day of release, Muna released the fourth single from the album "What I Want" with a music video. Later the trio released their cover of Britney Spears' "Sometimes" (1999) for the Hulu LGBTQ American romantic comedy film Fire Island in June 2022. (Brodsky, 2022)
In March 2023, Muna performed to a sold-out crowd of 15,000 people at the closing ceremony of WorldPride Sydney, alongside Ava Max and Kim Petras. In April 2023, the band performed their first set at Coachella. Shortly after, Muna released a new single "One That Got Away" alongside an "criminal underworld" inspired music video.(Rettig, 2023) Muna is currently an opening act on a few March through July 2023 US dates of Taylor Swift's The Eras Tour, and the Australian leg of Lorde's Solar Power Tour.
