Southern California rockers Death Valley Girls share ‘Basic Witch’, another look into their new album Welcome To Earth, out 9 October via Suicide Squeeze Records.
Breaking free from the doom loop of blame, ‘Basic Witch’ explores taking ownership of your choices and protecting your boundaries, alongside a music video featuring legendary punk icon Exene Cervenka of Los Angeles punk pioneers X.
Reflecting on the track, lead singer and songwriter Bonnie Bloomgarden explains:
“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.”
On the video, Bloomgarden added:
“The concept for the video is pretty funny, imagine Karate Kid meets Quadrophenia 🙂
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 :)”
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