Tag: Gang of Four

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Saskatoon’s Slow Down Molasses Releases a Hilariously Absurd Visual for “120 Minutes”-like “Street Haunting”

Led by Tyson McShane, the Saskatoon-based indie rock act Slow Down Molasses have developed a reputation for a constantly evolving sound as a result of a series of lineup changes and for an anxious and frenetic live show, which they’ve taken around the world in support of 2016’s 100% Sunshine.

The band’s latest single “Street Haunting” is the first bit of new material from the band since the release of 100% Sunshine and the new single manages to further cement the band’s reputation for an ever-changing sound Featuring angular and propulsive rhythms, explosive power chords, tons of feedback and fuzz and a supple bass line, “Street Haunting” brings 120 Minutes-era MTV to mind — in particular, Pavement and Sonic Youth with some sprinklings of Gang of Four. And as a result, the song is underpinned by a throbbing anxious energy. “Musically, we were excited to capture some the anxious energy of our live show, while still keeping the song very focused,” the band’s Tyson McShane says. “It nicely rides a line between the concise garage pop that some of us love and the feedback drenched chaos that our live shows tend to dwell in.”

The song’s punchily delivered lyrics draw some inspiration from Virgnia Woolf’s essay of the same name. “Lyrically the song ruminates on the casual, but oft-underappreciated beauty of the urban environment and the predictability of a person’s daily tasks,” the band’s McShane explained. “Taking  some inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s essay of the same name and mixing that with the sense of isolated other-ness that comes from living in a city far from the world’s major cultural cities.  A place sometimes overflowing with creative energy, but where it often necessary to remind oneself of the casual brilliance of one’s peers and the places we typically tend to haunt.”

Directed by Aaron Scholz, the recently released video features the band’s members wearing raccoon masks while performing routine human activities, like going through their record collection and shaving and typical raccoon activities, like rooting through garbage, scratching at doors and exploring abandoned, suburban homes. They also manage to play music. The video makes the mundane seem absurd and ridiculous.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Palm Ghosts Release a Paranoid and Uneasy Meditation on Our Current Moment

Led by singer/songwriter, producer and Ice Queen Records founder Joseph Lekkas, the Nashville-based indie rock act Palm Ghosts can trace its origins to when Lekkas resided in Philadelphia. After spending a number of years playing in local bands like Grammar Debate! and Hilliard, Lekkas took a lengthy hiatus from writing, recording and performing music to book shows and festivals in and around the Philadelphia area.

Lekkas initially started Palm Ghosts as a solo recording project — and as a creative outlet to cope with an incapacitating bout of depression and anxiety. During a long Northeastern winter, he recorded a batch of introspective songs that at the time, he dubbed “sun-damaged American music” that would eventually become the project’s full-length debut. After a short tour in 2013 to support the album, Lekkas packed up his belongings and relocated to Nashville, enticed by the city’s growing indie rock scene.

Palm Ghosts’ third album, 2018’s Architecture was a bit of a change in sonic direction for the project with Lekkas writing material influenced by the sounds of the 80s — in particular, Cocteau Twins, Peter Gabriel, Dead Can Dance, New Order, The Cure, and others. A couple of years have passed since I’ve written about the Nashville-based Lekkas, but as it turns out the JOVM mainstay has been busy. Much like countless acts across the world last year, the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns and restrictions, political and financial turmoil and protest fueled an immediacy and energy in the songs Lekkas and company had been writing.

The band’s fourth album, Lifeboat Candidate was written and recorded remotely with the individual bandmembers emailing song ideas, instrumental parts, lyrics and melodies back and forth. Slated for a March 19, 2021 release, Lifeboat Candidate is a fittingly dark and dystopian effort, full of confusion, fear and dread — but with a bit of humor and hope. Interestingly, Lifeboat Candidate’s first single “Blind,” was the one of the first songs written and recorded last summer. Centered around tribal drumming, shimmering synth arpeggios and slashing guitars, “Blind” is one part Peter Gabriel 3 and Security-era Peter Gabriel, one part Joy Division and one part Gang of Four. It’s an uneasy and tense song that’s about the suspicion and paranoia that stand in the way of truly and honestly seeing people that seems all too suited for the age of QAnon, NewsMax and OAN.

The recently released video for “Blind” is a paranoid and uneasy fever dream using rapidly flashing collage artwork that evokes a dystopian hellscape in flames. Does it feel familiar, yet?

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: The Lounge Society’s Sociopolitically Charged, Dance Floor Friendly Satire

The Lounge Society — Cameron Davey (vocals, bass), Archie Dewis (drums), Herbie May (guitar) and Hani Paskin-Hussain (guitar) — is a rising Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, UK band, whose members are roughly around the ages of 16-17. And in a remarkably short period of time, the Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire-based act have developed a sound and approach that draws from a diverse array of influences including The Fall, Talking Heads, The Velvet Underground and Fat White Family among others.

The rising British act caught the attention of Speedy Wunderground co-founders Pierre Hall, Dan Carey, and Alexis Smith, and by the time the band’s manager had contacted the label, Hall, Carey and Smith quickly recognized that they were in a now-or-never moment to work with a band that by all accounts are lining themselves up to one of the next big things from Northern England. Because of their youth, the members of the and actually needed permission to miss their exams in order to come down to Speedy Wunderground’s Streatham, Greater London headquarters and studio to record material. And they needed an adult guardian to check them into the nearby hotel they booked for for their session.

Despite their relative youth, the young rising act made quite the impression on the Speedy Wunderground folks. “They are great. Really fun to work with — and a fucking amazing band,” Dan Carey enthuses. The day that the band entered the studio, things happened quickly: after messing around a bit with the members of the band trying out different amps and guitars. As soon as they were ready, Carey set the mood of the sessions by turning the lights off and turning on the smoke machine and lasers. And as they started to play, the building’s smoke alarm went off, which according to the band and the label was the first time that had ever happened.

Earlier this year,. I wrote about The Lounge Society’s debut single, the expansive yet breakneck “Generation Game.” Clocking in at 5:30, the band self-assuredly crafts a difficult to pigeonhole sound with the single featuring elements of shoegaze, psych rock, punk and Brit Pop held together by a propulsive rhythm section. “Generation Game” manages to capture the upstarts as a runaway train of rambunctious abandon, piss and vinegar and distortion pedaled power chords.

Building upon the buzz they received from “Generation Game,” The Lounge Society’s latest single “Burn the Heather” continues their ongoing collaboration with Dan Carey while being centered around a post-punk/punk funk strut that recalls Talking Heads, Gang of Four and Echoes-era The Rapture, complete with copious cowbell. And while being a dance floor friendly jam, the song finds the band continuing to write material that’s sociopolitically charged: The song’s title is derived from the annual local ritual of rich landowners burning moor-top heather for lucrative grouse-shoots. Locals in the valley have blamed that annual local ritual for frequent flooding that has devastated them financially and emotionally. Much like its predecessor, “Burn the Heather” is the sound and voice of England’s young people — and perhaps young people everywhere: hyper aware of their local and global world, articulate, pissed off, energized and ready to grab society by the horns.

Centered around strikingly macabre lyrics, “Burn the Heather” is a deeply personal song for the upstart British act. “‘Burn the Heather’ is a song deeply rooted in where we come from,” the band explain in press notes. “The lyrics are our interpretation of some of the darker aspects of where we live, and our personal reaction to them. Musically, ‘Burn the Heather’ is intended to be an adrenaline shot to the brain. We wanted this to be the second single all along. We don’t want to be just another post-punk band, and we knew ‘Heather’ would keep people on their toes. Unlike a lot of our tracks, the guitars are quite minimal and the rhythm really carries it, and we think it works really well. We want to make people move.”

Directed by Nick Farrimond, the recently released video fittingly follows the song’s macabre lyrics with rich landowner types hunting people — in this case, young people, dressed as prisoners in orange or perhaps red?) jumpsuits. (Editor’s note: Americans will see it this way. Across the country, the orange jumpsuit typically denotes prisoner.) Clearly pointing out the inequalities of power, class and wealth, the members of the band are hunted down — and there’s ton of carnage, as well as an ironic twist.

“Born from the sense of injustice surrounding irresponsible land owners who clear heather from the moorland for grouse hunting, (resulting in increased flood risks below in the valley where we all live) we decided to portray caricatured versions of grouse hunters, dressed head to toe in tweed and showing total disregard for the landscape and devoid of any values, morals or ethics,” the video’s director Nick Farrimond explains. “The band play the parts of grouse, making their way across the moors, dressed in fetching red boiler suits and unaware of the impending danger they face. What ensues is general carnage as the grouse are hunted one by one, each meeting a grizzly, untimely end…or do they? You’ll have to watch the video to find out.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstays Dream Wife Drops Blistering Single from Soon-to-Be Released Live Album

Deriving their name from a pointed criticism of society’s objectification of women, the London-based punk rock trio and JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Icelandic-born, London-based Rakel Mjöll (vocals), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) — can trace their origins to when the trio met and started the band back in 2015 as an art project centered around a unique concept: a ban d born out of one girl’s memories of growing up in Canada in the 1990s.

Dream Wife’s 2018 self-titled debut was released to widespread critical acclaim — and the London-based JOVM mainstays supported the album by opening for Garbage, The Kills and Sleigh Bells and playing that year’s SXSW. Building upon a growing international profile, the members of Dream Wife also went on a series of headlining tours across the European Union and the States, which included a Rough Trade stop with New York-based genre-defying artist Sabri.

Released earlier this year through Lucky Number Music, the London-based trio’s Marta Salogni-produced So When You Gonna . . . finds the JOVM mainstays crafting what may arguably be their most urgent and direct material to date. Thematically touching upon abortion, miscarriage and gender equality, the album’s material if fueled by a “it’s now or never” immediacy, in which the listener is told that they need to get off their ass and start doing something to make the world a better place for all — right this very second. In the UK, So When You Gonna . . . has been a critical and commercial success: the album landed at #18 on the UK Albums Chart, making it the only album in the Top 20 to be produced by an all womxn/non-male production and engineering team — and the only non-major label release to chart that high.

To celebrate such a momentous achievement in their careers, Dream Wife will be releasing a live album, IRL (Live in London 2020). Recorded at a Peckham Audio show back in January, the live album, captures the band’s ferocious and feral live sound, which has made them a must-see live act. But it also captures something much larger and much more important what so many of us miss: the transcendent ecstasy of a fan seeing their favorite artist play their favorite song live; the camaraderie with newfound friends over your mutual love of that artist — or of traveling to see that artist and on and on and on.

IRL (Live in London 2020)’s first single is a previously unreleased song “Cheap Thrills.” Centered around slashing guitars, a propulsive bass line, four-on-the-floor drumming and Mjöll’s brash and bratty delivery, “Cheap Thrills” sonically is one part Gang of Four, one part Yeah Yeah Yeahs and one part Garbage with a youthful and defiant urgency.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Led by frontman Zac Woolery, the London-based post-punk act DEADLETTER emerged into the national scene with the release of their debut single “Good Old Days” earlier this year, which received airplay on regional BBC and BBC 6. Building upon a rapidly growing profile, the rising London-based act’s second single “Fit For Work” is an angry, attention-grabbing track featuring the angular guitar attack that recalls Entertainment!-era Gang of Four, centered around an alternating quiet verses, a No Wave-like, explosive chorus and call-and-response vocals.

Although the song has a decidedly British point of view, the song thematically focuses on our seemingly unending Kafkaesque hellscape of cruelly indifferent bureaucrats, and ridiculous laws and regulations that crush dreams, hopes and lives — in particular, governments and institutions that force people to work in the most absurd situations to get by — or to get a little bit of money from the government. “‘Fit For Work’ was a concept a long time before it was a song,” DEADLETTER’s Zac Woolery explains in press notes. “As a band, and as a writer, we [I] have always regarded the call and response strategy as biblical. The idea of having a conversation during the delivery of art leads to this absurd metaphysical tangent of acknowledging your art is art whilst performing it; similar to when artists use the line “I wrote this song for you because…” what they are doing, when you think about it, is taking away the idea that what they’re creating exists in itself, and is in fact an entity that exists in a wholly real world.

“As a song, “Fit For Work” is about more than just the Department for Work and Pensions. It provides a mirror to the world, and specifically the Britain of today.  The ideas explored within the track are seemingly exaggerated accounts of reality but, upon close examination, have worrying roots in true experience, with the track aiming to parallel the savagery of the narrator in the song with the actual brutality of our government.

“The declaration of someone as ‘Fit For Work’ is symptomatic of the apathy and bureaucratic cruelty prevalent in society, where being unable to meet a certain ticked number of boxes (either literally or metaphorically), equates to the surrender of personal autonomy, and by extension, individual identity.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Dream Wife Releases a Riotous Visual for Mosh Pit Ripper “So When You Gonna . . . “

Deriving their name as a commentary on society’s objectification of women, the London-based punk rock trio and JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Icelandic-born, London-based Rakel Mjöll (vocals), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) — can trace their origins to when the trio met and started the band back in 2015 as part of an art project conceptualized around the idea of a band born out of one girl’s memories of growing up in Canada during the 1990s.

2018 saw the band release their self-titled, full-length debut to critical acclaim. And as a result, the band built up a profile as a must-see live act, playing at SXSW, opening for Garbage, The Kills and Sleigh Bells, which they followed up with sold-out headlining tours across the European Union and the US — including a stop at Rough Trade with New York-based genre-defying artist Sabri. Adding to a growing profile, the band had their music appear in the Netflix hit series Orange is The New Black. But at the core of all of that is the trio’s mission to lift up other womxn and non-binary creatives with empowering messages and a “girls to the front” ethos.

Slated for a July 3, 2020 release through Lucky Number Music, the London-based trio’s Marta Salogni-produced So When You Gonna . . .  may arguably be the most urgent and direct call to the action of the rising act’s growing catalog. Thematically touching upon some of the most important and sobering themes of our sociopolitical moment including abortion, miscarriage and gender equality, the album is centered by an “it’s a now or never” immediacy in which the listener is directly encouraged to stop waiting, get off your ass and start doing something. The album’s title also plays on its central idea. “It’s an invitation, a challenge, a call to action,” the band’s Rakel Mjöll says in press notes.

So far, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:  the bombastic, maximalist, tongue-in-check “Sports!,” which recalled Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!and Freedom of Thought-era DEVO, Fever to Tell-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Entertainment-era Gang of Four with an exuberant, zero fucks given air — and the achingly nostalgia “Hasta La Vista,” a mid-tempo track that focused on the tight familial bond the band has developed through a shared experience of life on the road, the aching nostalgia for the people, places and things from home you miss while away, and the odd feeling that things have changed in some way that you can’t quite put a finger on when you get back. 

So When You Gonna . . .’s third and latest single, the infectious and anthemic album title track “So When You Gonna . . .” is a most pit friendly ripper featuring bursts of angular guitar chords and punchily delivered lyrics. Proudly continuing their girls and womxn to the front ethos, their latest offering is sultry, in-your-face challenge in which its narrator displays her bodily autonomy and desires with a bold self-assuredness that says “Well, what are you waiting for? We both know what we want. Let’s get to it!” 

“It’s a dare, an invitation, a challenge.  It’s about communicating your desires, wholehearted consent and the point where talking is no longer enough,” the members of Dream Wife explain. “It promotes body autonomy and self empowerment through grabbing the moment. The breakdown details the rules of attraction in a play by play ‘commentator’ style, inspired by Meat Loaf’s ‘Paradise by the Dashboard Light.”

Directed by Aidan Zamiri, the recently released video for “When You Gonna . . .” is shot from the first person POV perspective of the inside of someone’s very hungry mouth. The viewer follows the mouth as it attends a sweaty and raucous Dream Wife show that captures the energy of their live show — and most important, the excitement of strangers suddenly bonding over their love of their favorite band. And like a lot of shows, our protagonist meets and kisses a bunch of attractive new friends, and interacts directly with their favorite band. Seeing your favorite band at some dark, sweaty, booze soaked shithole is a profound experience that simply can’t be manufactured or replicated and for me, the video for “When You Gonna . . .” reminds me of the things I desperately miss. 

“For the video we worked with our favourite elf prince Aidan Zamiri who filmed around a free sweaty, sexy, gig we did for our fans back in January – shot as a first person POV from the inside of a mouth,” the band says of the new video. “Performing live is the beating heart of this band and we miss it, so please take this video as a little love letter to the rock show.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstay Alison Mosshart Releases a Film Noir-ish Black and White Visual for Atmospheric “It Ain’t Water”

Alison Mosshart is a Vero Beach, FL-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter best known as one-half of the acclaimed indie rock act JOVM mainstays The Kills — and for being the frontwoman of the indie rock/blues punk supergroup The Dead Weather. Over the past decade or so, Mosshart has been restlessly creative: her painting has been show in galleries across the world and she has published her first book, CAR MA, a collection of her art, photography and writing that serves as a love letter to all things automobile. In that same period of time, Mosshart has become a go-to collaborator, adding that extra dash of swaggering badassery, working with her Dead Weather bandmate Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream, Gang of Four, Cage The Elephant, Foo Fighters, James Williamson and Mini Mansions in a rapidly growing list.

2020 will continue a period of remarkably creative prolificacy for Mosshart: Currently, Mosshart and her bandmate Jamie Hince are working on the next Kills record, which they hope to be able to bring to the road — pandemic willing, of course. This year will also see Mosshart stepping out into the spotlight as a solo artist, releasing material under her name for the first time in her career. Although, releasing music under her own name is a completely new and thrilling experience, the album’s material can be traced back to unreleased material Mosshart had been compiling for the better part of the past decade. Now, as you may recall, last month, I wrote about her debut single, the  Lawrence Rothman-produced “Rise.” Initially tracing its origins to a song sketch that Mosshart wrote in 2013, the song is a slow-burning and searing blues with brooding and ominous undertones centered around thumping beats, fuzzy power chords, Mosshart’s imitable vocals and an enormous, arena rock friendly hook. 

Mosshart’s second and latest single is the atmospheric and brooding, Alain Johannes-produced and recorded “It Ain’t Water.” Centered around a sparse arrangement of shimmering acoustic guitars, strings and gently padded drums, the song manages to bring PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, and JOVM mainstay Mark Lanegan to mind. Although the song was written late last year, Mosshart had been sitting on the track for some time — with the acclaimed signer/songwriter guitarist turning to the then-unfinished track whenever she found herself battling a bout of writer’s block. 

“Working with Alain on ”It Ain’t Water’ was a blast. He’s such a talent and such a kind person,” the JOVM mainstay says of working with Alain Johannes. “His mind is wide open. He understands and sees the beauty in imperfection, magic moments, accidents- the soulful human stuff, and the spirited super-human hard to explain stuff that makes a song great. Working with him was an honor, and also, hot damn he can play any instrument like a champ . .  . like he invented the instrument himself. Alain Johannes IS music.” 

Directed, edited and shot by Mosshart, the recently released video continues a run of decidedly DIY visuals — but unlike its predecessor, its shot in an aptly film noir-like black and white and evokes our pandemic-influenced isolation, as we see the acclaimed Kills and Dead Weather frontwoman in her own home, expressively dancing in the background while we see a superimposed image of a sunglasses wearing Mossheart singing the song. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Dream Wife’s Achingly Nostalgic Visuals for “Hasta La Vista”

Deriving their name as a commentary on society’s objectification of women, the London-based punk rock trio and JOVM mainstays Dream Wife — Icelandic-born, London-based Rakel Mjöll (vocals), Alice Go (guitar, vocals) and Bella Podapec (bass, vocals) — can trace their origins to when the trio met and started the band back in 2015 as part of an art project conceptualized around the idea of a band born out of one girl’s memories of growing up in Canada during the 1990s.

2018 saw the band release their self-titled, full-length debut to critical acclaim. And as a result, the band built up a profile as a must-see live act, playing at SXSW, opening for Garbage, The Kills and Sleigh Bells, which they followed up with sold-out headlining tours across the European Union and the US — including a stop at Rough Trade with New York-based genre-defying artist Sabri. Adding to a growing profile, the band had their music appear in the Netflix hit series Orange is The New Black. But at the core of all of that is the trio’s mission to lift up other womxn and non-binary creatives with empowering messages and a “girls to the front” ethos.

Slated for a July 3, 2020 release through Lucky Number Music, the London-based trio’s Marta Salogni-produced So When You Gonna . . .  may arguably be the most urgent and direct call to the action of the rising act’s growing catalog. Thematically touching upon some of the most important and sobering themes of our sociopolitical moment including abortion, miscarriage and gender equality, the album is centered by “it’s a now or never” immediacy in which the listener is encouraged to stop waiting, get off your ass and start doing something. The album’s title also plays on its central idea. “It’s an invitation, a challenge, a call to action,” the band’s Rakel Mjöll says in press notes. 

After playing roughly 200 shows during the course of 2018, the band didn’t bother to sit still and they turned to playing sports while writing the material that would eventually comprise their forthcoming sophomore album. “Sports!” the album’s bombastic, tongue-in-cheek first single featured explosive blasts of angular guitar, four-on-the-floor drumming, rapid-fire tempo shifts, shimmering synth arpeggios, enormous arena rock friendly hooks and winking vocal asides reminiscent of Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!and Freedom of Thought-era DEVO, Fever to Tell-era Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Entertainment-era Gang of Four with an exuberant, zero fucks given air. 

So When You Gonna . . . ‘s second and latest single “Hasta La Vista” is a mid-tempo track centered around four-on-the-floor drumming, shimmering and angular guitar chords, an infectious hook and Mjöll’s unique vocal delivery, which balances a girlish coquettishness with an aching and longing nostalgia for the friends and family they were away from while on the road, the small comforts of home that you’d miss while being on the road. But there’s also the acknowledgement of the tight, familial bond that they’ve developed with each other through their shared experiences of life on the road, and the aspects of their lives that have changed as a result of their lives as professional musicians. Much like a great deal of the material I’ve written about recently, “Hasta La Vista” reveals prescient parallels to our contemporary life: trapped in various forms of indefinite isolation, we can’t get the things we miss — and may never get them again. And we have to accept the changes within our lives, including the ones that may have permanent and long-lasting negative effects. 

“Hasta is one of the first songs we wrote after we completed our touring cycle for our debut album. We’d played over 200 shows in 18 months and had returned to London to discover that things around us had changed and so had we,” the band says in press notes. “Close relationships fell apart and others came together. This song is about accepting and embracing that change and being thankful to what that was and what it is today.”

The band adds, “Being on tour has some similarities to living under quarantine — the separation from loved ones, the submission to the process, the large amounts of time in contained spaces with the same group of people. We built this band around relentless touring and the celebration and love of the live show and the community that it creates. And we’re very much looking forward to experiencing that again, when the time is right.”

Edited by the band’s Rakel Mjöll, the recently released video for “Hasta La Vista” is centered around home video footage of the members of Dream Wife as adorable, small children — shot by their families. The video further emphasizes the song’s longing and wistful nostalgia. In this case for a far simpler, seemingly less uncertain time — and for several people, who may no longer be with them. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Alison Mosshart’s Self-Directed and Edited Visual for Ominous Solo Debut “Rise”

Alison Mosshart is a Vero Beach, FL-born, Nashville-based singer/songwriter a best known as one-half of the acclaimed indie rock act JOVM mainstays The Kills and for being the frontwoman of the indie rock/blues punk supergroup The Dead Weather. Interestingly, over the past decade or so, Mosshart has developed a reputation for being restlessly creative: she has had paintings shown in galleries across the world and she recently published her first book CAR MA, a collection of her art, photography and writing that serves as a love letter to all things automobile. Additionally, Mosshart has developed a reputation for being a go-to collaborator for that added dash of badassery, working with her Dead Weather bandmate Jack White, Arctic Monkeys, Primal Scream, Gang of Four, Cage The Elephant, Foo Fighters, James Williamson and Mini Mansions in a rapidly growing list. 

2020 will continue a period of remarkably creative prolificacy for Mosshart: Currently, Mosshart and her bandmate Jamie Hince are working on the next Kills record, which they hope to be able to bring to the road — pandemic willing, of course. Interestingly, this year also see Mosshart stepping out into the spotlight as a solo artist, releasing material under her name for the first time in her career. And although for Mosshart, releasing music under her own name is a new and thrilling experience, it’s a process that can be traced back more than a decade with Mosshart compiling a trove of unreleased material. Her debut single, the Lawrence Rothman-produced “Rise” can trace its origins back to 2013 when she first wrote the initial sketch of the song.  The end result is a slow-burning and searing blues with brooding and ominous undertones centered around thumping beats, fuzzy power chords, Mosshart’s imitable vocals and a soaring hook. 

“I didn’t ever forget it,” Mosshart recalls. “I remember right where I was when I wrote it, sitting at my desk in London, missing someone badly. Interestingly, when the Sacred Lies team reached out to the Kills and Dead Weather frontwoman about doing a signature song for the song, she knew “Rise” had the right sort of vibe for the show. Interestingly, “Rise” is prominently featured in the final episode of  the FacebookWatch drama Sacred Lies with the song serving as a major plot point within the series’ story. 

Much like everyone else across the world, Mosshart is hunkered down in her Nashville home and she’s used this period of social distancing and quarantine to teach herself video editing. Shot, edited and directed by Mosshart, the recently released video for “Rise” is comprised of footage from a recent trip she took to Los Angeles with most of it centered around capturing lowrider culture.