Today's Song of the Day, as chosen by John Richards, host of The Morning Show on KEXP, is "What Are the Odds" by Death Valley Girls, from the 2023 album Islands in the Sky on Suicide Squeeze.
Los Angeles-based garage rockers Death Valley Girls are releasing their fifth record Islands in the Sky on February 24th via Suicide Squeeze. The follow-up to 2020’s Under the Spell Of Joy was recorded in a cabin in the California woods in early 2022 following a “mysterious illness” that left frontwoman Bonnie Bloomgarden bedridden from November 2020 to March 2021 which inspired much of the record.
“When I was sick I had to sleep most of the day,” Bloomgarden details in a press release. “I kept waking up every few hours with an intense message to take care of the island, feed the island…I have no idea why, but making music for the island kept coming up.”
Our Song of the Day is the lead single off the record “What Are the Odds,” a rollicking riff-ripping scorcher that takes its inspiration from an unlikely source: Madonna. “In ‘I’m A Man Too’ we were trying to revisit No Doubt’s ‘I’m Just A Girl’ but through a new lens,” explains Bloomgarden. “‘What Are The Odds’ is in the same way an investigation/revisitation of Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ but with a DVG spin.”
She continues on to say, “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??”
The video for the song sees two versions of the band, one where they’re black hoodie-clad amongst a dreary LA landscape and the other a technicolor dreamscape of them lounging at a pool with red beehives. Which one is the simulation is anyone’s guess, but I’d personally rather live in the latter. Watch the Samantha Westervelt-directed video below.
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