In the first episode that premiered at SXSW as a part of the Independent TV Pilot Program, audiences saw stories of birth from two very different worlds. Shealy’s character, Maya, meets an affluent couple from Tribeca before getting thrown into her first real birth experience as a doula, working with a single mother from the Bronx with limited resources.
Shealy describes birth as slightly “punk rock,” so she wanted a soundtrack to create a similar effect, leading her to singer-songwriter and alternative pop star Mikaela Mullaney Straus, better known as King Princess.
The musician had a busy year, with the release of their most recent studio album, Girl Violence, hitting record store shelves in September of 2025. In hindsight, the title of this most recent record may have been an apt premonition of King Princess’ work on the soundtrack of for Birth is for P*ssies.
“I remember … reading the script and hearing Hannah’s story of being a doula, and really knowing nothing about birth myself at all, and I was like, ‘God, birth is really punk rock,’” King Princess says.
Shealy and the rest of the production team were open to their ideas for the soundtrack, which were inspired by listening to IDLES and deciding on a punk sound with “shrieky and feminine” elements, the artist says.
“I was like, ‘Well, maybe it should be kind of punk,’ because it’s to juxtapose this thing that we all think is … so beautiful,” King Princess says. “No, it’s guttural, so maybe we should do something that sounds kind of punk and crazy.”
