There’s something about Michael Cimino that feels both freshly composed yet halfway familiar. Maybe it’s the cadence of his voice—steady, unfussy, searching—or the way he moves in between roles, genres, even creative mediums without announcing the shift. One moment he’s a sensitive teen navigating queerness in Love, Victor, the next he’s tearing through underground racing scenes in Motorheads or reliving the same haunted night in the horror film Until Dawn. And now, he’s simply himself—or something close to it—on his upcoming SUPERHERO, his newest EP and clearest declaration yet.

The songs feel like a return to something that was never really put down. Cimino grew up with dreams of being a rockstar—music, he says, was always his first love—but acting opened the doors. So he walked through them, made his name, and now circles back to the sound that he’s been quietly forming behind the scenes for the last two years.

SUPERHERO doesn’t aim for spectacle as much as it offers proof-of-heart. It’s melodic, polished, tender, unafraid. The first single, "Superhero," plays like a kinetic self-check—bright, tightly produced, and hopeful without being saccharine. His next offering, "reminds me of you," drops today, a late night slowburn that began, fittingly, with a drive to clear his head and ended with a song that he says “flowed” to him one night.

And in a cultural moment that offers hyper-visibility or carefully engineered rawness, Cimino’s creative life feels like it’s being built for continuity—an ongoing act of returning to what feels good, even if you have to fight for it. “A song is finished,” he says, “when it’s out. Until then, I’m always changing it.”

See below, Cimino speaking on exhaustion, intuition, feeling like Robin instead of Batman, and what it means to let yourself be seen in your work—not for what you might represent, but for who you already are.

“Superhero” feels like a playful, polished entry into your next music chapter. What made that song feel like the right introduction to SUPERHERO?

To me, “Superhero” felt like the beginning of finding my sound and made me feel so liberated and excited, thus it needed to be at the start of the project.

‍You’ve said that music is your “first love.” Did it ever feel like something you had to put on the backburner for acting? Or was it always running in parallel?

When I was growing up it just felt like more doors were opening for acting so I just put most of my energy into that. But now that I’ve established myself I feel like it’s amazing to just continue to expand my artistry in both disciplines.

You’ve talked about growing up being a rockstar. Now that you’re releasing an EP, what’s something about the music industry that’s surprised you?

I think the idea of music is showing who you are and bringing yourself into the sound. But with acting it’s almost the opposite. You want to disappear into the character and mold yourself to fit into each different person you embody.

Can you tell me about the thought process behind writing “reminds me of you”? Where were you emotionally when you wrote it?

We were having a writing camp and I was writing every single day for a while, and I was feeling kind of burnt out and like I wasn’t loving everything I was making. I went for a long drive before the session to just get my mind into the right place to just let something flow through me. Then when Omari started playing the keys that’s exactly what happened. We finished the whole song in one night. And it hasn’t changed too much since then.

What kind of superhero would the EP version of you be? Like—what are his powers and what are his weaknesses?

I feel like a superhero version of myself in this project is kind of like “Robin”. He doesn’t have powers but he has grit and determination and smarts.

How do you know when a song is finished? Especially as someone who works across two creative lanes—do you lean more on intuition or editing?

Honestly I think a song is finished when it’s out. I don’t feel like it’s ever done until the world hears it and you physically cannot change anything else. I worked on this project for almost two years. And I was changing things until I ran out of time to change anything else.