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recommend contacting us as soon as possible. Day of show requests may
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and you will avoid the line outside. Be sure you tell us you're
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the restaurant. Reserve HERE. bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube
| Instagram L.A Witch L.A. Witch have always exuded an aura of
effortless cool, whether it manifested as theAmericana noir and
laconic back-to-basics rock n’ roll of their self-titled debut or
the blistering austere adventurism of their sophomore album Play With
Fire. The band—comprised of SadeSanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai
(bass), and Ellie English (drums)—began as an informal affair, but
the sultry and beguiling reverb-draped songs they created caught on
with the public, moving the project beyond the insular space of the
band’s friends and peers in Southern California into the broader
world. On their latest album, DOGGOD, the trio push their craft beyond
their previous creative and geographical confines, opting to craft the
material in Paris, recording the tracks at Motorbass Studio on the Rue
de Martyrs. DOGGOD explores broader swaths of sonic terrain, employs a
greater arsenal of tones, and probes larger existential and cosmic
themes, all while retaining the band’s signature sense of the
forbidden, the forsaken, and the foreboding. DOGGOD is a way of
tackling the universal riddle tangled in the spiritual nature of love
and devotion. “I feel like I’m some sort of servant or slave to
love,” says Sanchez. “There’s a willingness to die for love in
the process of serving it or suffering for it or in search of it...
just in the way a loyal, devoted servant dog would.” The album title
is a palindrome fusing togetherDOG and GOD—an exaltation of the
submissive and a subversion of the divine. It’s a nod to the purity
of dogs and an acknowledgement of their unconditional love and
protective nature that’s at odds with the various pejoratives
associated with the species. “There is this symbolic connection
between women and dogs that expresses women’s subordinate position
in society,”Sanchez explains. “And anything that embodies such
divine characteristics never deserved tobe a word used as an
insult.” These conflicted explorations of love and subservience
manifest themselves in L.A. Witch’s fusion of their trademark smooth
and smoky garage alchemy with a newfound utilization of post-punk’s
disciplined reserve and icy instrumentation. Album opener “Icicle”
captures the band journeying out of the proto-punk, psychedelia, and
gritty riffage of the ‘70s into the chorus-drenched guitars and
forlorn minimalism of Joy Division and early The Cure. A parallel is
drawn between romantic suicide and martyrdom that carries over into
the second song, “KissMe Deep.” Here Sanchez describes a love so
pure that it transcends time and carries over into multiple lifetimes.
It’s a song about passion delivered in the worldly and wounded
stoicism of early goth pioneers. From there, the band segues into the
lead single “777,” a song about devotion to the point of death. A
propulsive beat, a driving distorted riff, and Sanchez’s ethereal
vocals come together to create a song that’s both dire in its
fatalism and sensual in its faithful passion. Across the entirety of
DOGGOD, L.A. Witch never strays from their muse. On “I Hunt You
Pray,”Pai lays down a hypnotic bass throb while English employs a
cyclical krautrock groove andSanchez paints a picture of an abandoned
dog on the roadside, alone in the night, living as both the hunter and
the hunted. On “Eyes of Love,” the band harnesses the meditative
mid-tempo repetition, deconstructed chords, and esoteric ruminations
on love, death, and spirituality that made Lungfish such a beloved
entity. It reinforces the parallel between the unwavering love
seen in the eyes of a dog and the self-sacrifice of a savior. On
“The Lines,” the band takes the propulsive pulse of post-punk and
adds an extra dose of chorus to the mix. “Chorus is a modern effect
that comes from the idea of replicating the slight pitch discrepancies
of a choir. There is a shimmering quality which ties us back into this
spiritual godly feel,” Sanchez explains. Coupled with the addition
of organ and applied to a brooding minor-key melody, the song
simultaneously conjures both the holy and the sacrilegious. The title
track “DOGGOD” bears perhaps the strongest resemblance to the
material found on the previous album Play With Fire, pitting lean and
mean guitars against a scrappy rhythm section and dreamy vocals. But
whereas their previous album was a rallying cry to carving one’s own
path, “DOGGOD” adheres to the album’s“til death do us part”
theme, going so far as to describe a level of submission that crosses
over into dangerous and unhealthy places, with Sanchez singing “hang
me on a leash / ‘til I wait for my release.” Ultimately, DOGGOD is
a perfect encapsulation of L.A. Witch’s approach. It’s
simultaneously romantic and menacing, reverent and profane, a
celebration and a lament. It finds the thread between the past and
present, taking familiar sounds and revamping them for the modern
age.But it also heralds a new era for the band, looking beyond the
Kodachrome memories of midcentury America and digging deeper into the
medieval and gothic energies of Paris and beyond, all while probing
inward at a sullied heart. SF-based band chokecherry is dark, black
widow energy wrapped in the foil of our generation. Self produced
with a head rush of garage band sonics overlaid with a siren ensemble
of layered vocal poise, “Glass Jaw” puts an original fingerprint
on a historic scene. This being just their debut single, the song
amassed over 1 millions streams on Spotify without a single editorial
playlist. With their second single, “Around Around Around,” the
duo continued to show they are paving their own way with a fusion
of influences including shoegaze, classic rock, and grunge. The duo
is set to perform at number of festivals in the U.S. this year, while
working on new singles and a debut album.
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10/07/2025 Last update