Kat Leon is a Connecticut-born singer/songwriter, whose musical career started in earnest as one half of the Los Angeles, CA-based indie electro pop act Sad Robot, with Long Beach, CA-born, Los Angeles, CA-based multi-instrumentalist Nick Perez — and throughout her stint with Sad Robot, Leon developed a reputation for crafting material that was largely inspired by death and the occult.
With both of her parents suddenly dying within months of one another, Leon was plunged into a period of profound and heartbreaking grief. And after taking time to grieve the loss of her parents, Leon began her latest solo recording project, Holy Wars, which is deeply and profoundly influenced by some of the darkest days of her life; in fact, the project in many ways is to her an extrapolation of the tumultuous feelings and thoughts she had felt during that period — an the result is her debut double EP Mother, which is slated for a June 30, 2017 release and Father, which is slated for release later on this summer. Both EPs are dedicated to her respective parents and while being understandably dark, the material isn’t completely nihilistic, and as you’ll hear on Mother‘s first single “I Can’t Feel A Thing,” the material is meant to be a cathartic release paired within a rousingly anthemic, arena rock-friendly sound reminiscent of Paramore — but with a hint of profoundly adult angst, the sort of angst that comes from recognizing that death is a permanent parting, that there are no real answers, and that the only thing anyone can do is figure out a way to move forward to the best of their ability.
Directed by Jeremy Cordy, the recently released video features Kat Leon dressed in a god bodysuit and two other women, perhaps as representatives of the song’s narrator at various ages, expressively dancing with figures clad entirely in dark — and it’s meant to evoke each character being tugged, pulled, tossed around and in some way being seduced by their darkness, a darkness that overwhelmingly overpowers them. It’s clearly symbolic and yet gorgeously done.