Nellie McKay is releasing Gee Whiz: The Get Away From Me Demos, in May 2025. This eighteen-track collection of rare recordings led to McKay’s groundbreaking debut album, 2004’s Get Away From Me. “I was attracted to the lyrics immediately,” says legendary Beatles engineer and producer Geoff Emerick. He was drawn to the demos and produced Get Away From Me. “Her level of maturity at such a young age is astounding. You come across an artist of this caliber once every ten or fifteen years. And I don’t do a lot of projects these days unless something really stands out, like this did.”

Composed, performed and produced by Nellie, these revelatory demos were recorded in 2002 and sold by McKay as a series of handmade CD-R’s. The new demo collection has been sequenced identically to Get Away From Me, with three unreleased bonus songs. When Get Away From Me was released in 2004, Rolling Stone gave the album four stars. McKay made her national TV debut on The Late Show with David Letterman, and it hit the Billboard Top 200. She was compared to both “Doris Day and Eminem,” said NPR Morning Edition. “And throw in a bit of Billie Holiday for good measure.” “It was a different time,” says Nellie.