B-Side Guys

Jealousy demands dental work. At least according to Madeline & Makk Mikkael’s “Ugly Feeling,” where the opening confession “When she smiles at me/I gotta bite down deep/And now she’s stuck in my teeth” provides perhaps the most viscerally accurate description of envy committed to indie pop.

Released February 17th alongside a Donia Rogia-directed video that pays homage to Robert Altman’s surrealist classic “Three Women,” this collaboration marks Madeline’s first visual offering in two years. The Los Angeles artist, fresh off editorial support from Spotify for her single “Thought You Knew,” joins forces with Makk Mikkael to explore jealousy’s physical manifestations through delicate acoustic arrangements that belie their lyrical intensity.

What distinguishes “Ugly Feeling” from standard jealousy narratives is its self-awareness. When the duo sings “She’s like an animal to me/I feel ashamed/The first to kill the first to feed/It’s embarrassing,” they acknowledge both primal instinct and socialized shame. This tension—between biological response and learned restraint—drives the song’s emotional current.

The video’s conceptual architecture mirrors this internal conflict. Borrowing Altman’s fragmented approach, Madeline assumes the role of an outgoing, oblivious roommate while Makk embodies reserved timidity. Their personalities gradually converge and swap, visualizing the song’s central question: “If I say how I feel is it gonna change things/If they stay the same is it too revealing?”

Most compelling is how the track anatomizes jealousy through medical metaphor. The lines “Broke myself in little parts/To pull my feelings out the dark/I gave them the tools and/Let them play operation” transform emotional processing into surgical procedure, suggesting that understanding jealousy requires clinical dissection of the self.

Written during a New Year’s Day session following what the artists describe as “a strange December,” the song channels raw vulnerability into structured introspection. The repeated refrain “Cause right next to my heart is the ugly feeling” locates jealousy not as fleeting emotion but as permanent cardiac neighbor—unwanted yet intimately close.

Through “Ugly Feeling,” Madeline and Makk Mikkael accomplish something rare: they make jealousy not just relatable but anatomically precise.