Nov 16, 2022
By Joey Arnone
Photography by Neto Velasco
LA goth-rock band Death Valley Girls have announced the release of a new album, Islands in the Sky, which will be out on February 24, 2023 via Suicide Squeeze. They have also shared a video for a new album single, “What Are the Odds.” View the Samantha Westervelt-directed video below, along with the album’s tracklist and cover art.
In a press release, the band’s Bonnie Bloomgarden states: “When we wrote ‘I’m a Man Too’ we were trying to revisit No Doubt’s ‘I’m Just a Girl’ but through a new lens. ‘What Are the Odds’ is in the same way an investigation /revisitation of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ but with a DVG spin. 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??!”
Bloomgarden also elaborates on the album, which was initially conceived while she was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021: “When I was sick, I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t want anyone—including my future self—to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message of love and acceptance to myself, but also from every self to every self, because we are all one!”
In September, Death Valley Girls previously shared the album track “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing.”
The band’s most recent album, Under the Spell of Joy, came out last year via Suicide Squeeze. It featured songs “The Universe” (one of our Songs of the Week) and “Hold My Hand” (another one of our Songs of the Week).
Islands in the Sky Tracklist:
1. California Mountain Shake
2. Magic Powers
3. Islands in the Sky
4. Sunday
5. What Are the Odds
6. Journey to Dogstar
7. Say It Too
8. Watch the Sky
9. When I’m Free
10. All That Is Not of Me
11. It’s All Really Kind of Amazing
