You shoot the stars
They’re not aligned
The way you hoped
You trace the lines
The mind constructs its own illusions, tracing lines where none exist, charting courses through a sea that moves of its own accord. You believe in patterns, in paths leading somewhere fixed, yet even the stars you aim for do not hold steady. The self deceives, shaping reality to fit its desires, floating through time, clinging to a script never truly written.
This is the theme behind The Lines, a searing new single from L.A. Witch‘s upcoming album DOGGOD, arriving April 4th via Suicide Squeeze Records.
L.A. Witch carved their name into the Southern California rock scene with a sound built for both the long, lonesome stretch of desert highways and the dim, sweat-soaked corners of downtown warehouse gigs. Their presence hums with a raw coolness, an effortless swagger that seeps through every note, from the dusky noir-tinged swagger of their self-titled debut to the scorched-earth boldness of Play With Fire. Sade Sanchez (guitar/vocals), Irita Pai (bass), and Ellie English (drums) began as a loose gathering of friends, their songs drifting through backrooms and basements until their hypnotic, reverb-laced incantations demanded wider attention.
A growling bassline drives The Lines forward, drums pounding like an unrelenting heartbeat, while wiry, fluorescent guitar riffs flicker like neon signs in a sleepless city. Sanchez’s deadpan vocal delivery snakes through the chaos, fusing darkwave, punk, and psychedelia into a feverish, hypnotic spell.
“The Lines for me is a key song in terms of production on this album and the shift in our sound,” says Sanchez. “We used a lot of effects we hadn’t utilized as much before like Chorus, Flanger, and string machines including the Solina and Roland VP330. This is the link between our surfy, California garage influences and our faster, colder influences…You could even say our more European influences.”
The video for “The Lines” features ASL interpreter and dancer, Lark Detweiler.
“The ASL featured in the video is a unique expression of the emotions in Sade Sanchez’s lyrics, personally interpreted and translated by Detweiler,” says director Sydney Mills. The song…features repeating lyrics, but Detweiler wanted to explore the many ways ASL can represent “lines”tracing the shape of a person, drawing a boundary between two people, or even shooting an arrow toward the stars…each reflecting how humans redefine and interact with lines in unique ways. By interpreting language into movement, we can express something deep about the struggles of being alive, stuck with a body beyond our control with feeling that can’t always been expressed with words alone. Some of us have to sing. Some play music. Some dance. Some sign…Detweiler is a warrior apostle, calling us toward a realm where the raw, blaring sounds of L.A. Witch ignites both ecstasy and the rebellion of true expression.”
Watch “The Lines” below:
On DOGGOD, the trio uproots their craft, breaking beyond former creative and geographic limits. They take their vision to Paris, etching tracks into the walls of Motorbass Studio on Rue des Martyrs. The album prowls through expansive sonic terrain, reaching for more tonal textures, deeper existential chasms, and celestial specters, all while preserving the band’s unshaken fixation on the forsaken, the forbidden, the foreboding.
Its title mirrors itself, a palindrome that binds devotion and divinity, submission and supremacy. It exalts the purity of the canine, an unwavering sentinel of loyalty, shielding against the world’s cruelties. Yet, it also questions the weight of names, how reverence and ridicule twist within a single word. The dog, stripped of pejoratives, stands noble and knowing, love unspoiled. The god, shaped by hands unseen, wields both wrath and wonder. Between them, the album roams—a feral hymn, an offering to those who kneel and those who reign.
“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 to be a word used as an insult.”
Tour dates:
- 19/4 – Sacramento, CA @ The Starlet Room*
- 21/4 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios*
- 22/4 – Vancouver, BC @ The Pearl*
- 23/4 – Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern*
- 25/4 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge*
- 26/4 – Grand Junction, CO @ Grand Junction Botanical Gardens
- 27/4 – Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive*
- 29/4 – St. Paul, MN @ Turf Club*
- 30/4 – Milwaukee, WI @ Shank Hall*
- 1/5 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall*
- 2/5 – Detroit, MI @ Lager House*
- 3/5 – Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall*
- 4/5 – Montreal, QC @ Bar “Le Ritz” PDB*
- 6/5 – Troy, NY @ No Fun*
- 7/5 – Cambridge, MA @ Sonia*
- 8/5 – Brooklyn, NY at TV Eye
- 9/5 – Brooklyn, NY @ TV Eye*
- 10/5 – Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s*
- 12/5 – Washington, D.C. @ DC9*
- 13/5 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle*
- 14/5 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl*
- 16/5 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall*
- 17/5 – Austin, TX @ Hotel Vegas*
- 18/5 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger*
- 20/5 – Albuquerque, NM @ Juno Brewery*
- 21/5 – Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar*
- 23/5 – Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room*
- 13/6 – Santa Cruz, CA @ Moe’s Alley^
- 14/6 – San Francisco, CA @ The Chapel^
- 15/5 – New Orleans, LA at Gasa Gasa
- 20/6 – Las Vegas, NV @ Swan Dive^
- 21/6 – Pioneertown, CA @ Pappy & Harriet’s^
- 27/6 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah^
- 28/6 – San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
*with DAIISTAR
^with Chokecherry
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