Los Angeles otherworldly rockers Death Valley Girls have heralded their return with a new single and music video for “What Are The Odds,” while also announcing their fourth LP Islands In The Sky which will arrive on Feb. 24, 2023.
The new album serves as their follow-up to Under The Spell Of Joy which arrived two years ago, though in the interim the band has been anything but stagnant. Releasing a split EP with Le Butcherettes and the life-affirming single “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing.” But that period between albums also saw a paradigm shift in the direction songwriter Bonnie Bloomgarden sought to aim her blistering anthems. In the midst of suffering through a mysterious illness that overtook her a few years ago, Bloomgarden turned her pen inwards to try and find a way to alleviate past, present, and future strife she might face.
On “What Are The Odds,” the quartet of Death Valley Girls (rounded out by drummer Rikki Styxx, guitarist Larry Schemel, and bassist/co-lead singer Sammy Westervelt) once more challenge and toy with their concept of reality. Though this time for the purpose of reaching new depths of introspection. Over the grinding rush of electric riffs and Bloomgarden/Westervelt’s lofty cries, “What Are The Odds” explores the idea of leaving messages to your future selves, albeit through dually mystical and sci-fi ideas like reincarnation and simulations.
The music video for “What Are The Odds,” directed by Westervelt, provides a dutifully whacky but bewitching narrative to mirror the band’s ideas. The video sees the band split between two different worlds: with one group wandering in monochromatic shades around a bleak Echo Park and the other enjoying a colorful sunny day by the pool (sporting bright red beehive wigs) — until both groups are reunited “The Brady Bunch” style in individual blue boxes.
And if the song’s chorus sounds slightly familiar — that’s intentional. Just as their song “I’m A Man Too” off their album Glow In The Dark was a reimagining of No Doubt’s “I’m Just a Girl,” the new single bears resemblance to Madonna’s “Material Girl.” But instead of a tongue-in-cheeking reveling in materialism, Death Valley Girls rally around meaningful introspection for the sake of breaking through to the varying versions of themselves that exist, have existed, or just might in the near future.
“What Are the Odds” is in the same way an investigation/revisitation of Madonna’s “Material Girl” but with a DVG spin,” Bloomgarden explained. “We love to think about consciousness, and existence, and we very much believe in some type of reincarnation, but also that this experience isn’t linear, there isn’t a past and future, there’s something else going on! What is it? Is it a simulation, are we simulated girls??!”
Islands In The Sky the new album from Death Valley Girls is out on Feb. 24, 2023, via Suicide Squeeze Records, pre-order it here.
Visit Death Valley Girls on their Bandcamp, Twitter, and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.
Words by Steven Ward
Watch the music video for “What Are The Odds” the new single from Death Valley Girls below!
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