Death Valley Girls – “Basic Witch”

Bonnie Bloomgarden, leader of the consistently great Los Angeles psychedelic rockers Death Valley Girls, recently lost her Altadena home in the California wildfires. That loss, along with the death of her dog Tommy, informed Death Valley Girls' upcoming album Welcome To Earth. We already posted the excellent lead single "Message From The Venus Flower." Their new song is a bright, emotional synth-garage bop about realizing how happy you are to have someone out of your life. Here's what she says about it:I had, by all standards, a very difficult and destabilizing few years — and that was before losing everything in the fire. When so much happens that is outside of your control, I think it’s a very human coping mechanism to try to assign blame and divide everything into good or bad. He’s bad, that place is good, what I did before was bad, so as long as I never do that again, I’ll be safe. We create these systems of duality because we think they’ll protect us. But duality rarely exists in real life.Eventually, I realized that assigning blame wasn’t empowering me; it was keeping me in a loop. So I started studying that loop, and I saw that I was actually repeating a pattern I’d been living out since I was a kid — constantly trying to figure out who was safe, who was dangerous, who was good, who was bad. It was exhausting.The more I looked inward, the more I realized that the only place I could really find power was within myself. I’m not saying we’re responsible for everything that happens to us. I’m saying we are responsible for what we do with what happens to us. For me, that meant taking radical accountability — not in a "blame the victim" way, but asking myself: Where was I giving away my power? Where was I putting people on pedestals and making them the priority? Where could I have had stronger boundaries? What could I do differently moving forward?I realized I had been doing this my whole life without even knowing it. This song is about taking control of your own boundaries. It’s about taking responsibility for your choices without needing blame, fault, victim, or perpetrator to consume you. Because when you stop looking outside yourself for someone to blame — or someone to save you — you get your power back.The "Basic Witch" video is a lot simpler than that. It stars the legendary X co-leader Exene Cervenka, who hits the gym to get buff enough to take on the back-alley bullies who tormented her. The video's director is Henry Mortensen, the son of Cervenka and Viggo Mortensen. Did you know those two were married for years? They were, and now their kid is in his thirties. Bonnie Bloomgarden describes it as "Karate Kid meets Quadrophenia." Here's what she says about the inspiration:It’s important to me to highlight people/ businesses we love when we have an opportunity to use our lil platform. After the fire, I felt super weak, so I started taking a strength training class from Candy in Echo Park. In a few short months, I felt and was stronger than I have ever been! When i find anything that helps me, I want to share that intel with the world, so we started working on a music video idea! I wanted her to train someone who was getting picked on like in Karate Kid. So we asked Henry Mortenson to direct and Exene Cervenka to star in the video with her friends Skating Polly, and Annette. It turned into a super cute family video. A real good time :)Check it out below.Welcome To Earth out 10/9 on Suicide Squeeze.