Legendary queer music icon Bitch has been enthralling fans with her singular brand of performance throughout her career. Today, she has announced her new album Bitchcraft due out February 4, 2022 on Kill Rock Stars. Armed with her arsenal of violins, synthesizers, pulsing percussion and witty lyricism, the new collection takes her sound in a new direction with spectral, heartbreaking, political and beautiful witchy poet pop tracks. Bitchcraft is like Joni Mitchell set to a click track, it’s queer Cyndi Lauper. It’s neon pink, in your face, ready to hex you with its brilliance. It also makes you think: about the state of the world, about evil politicians, about what it means to exist as a woman, and how to find joy along the way. 

Alongside the announcement, Bitch has revealed the combative lead album single “Hello Meadow” alongside a colorful music video. Written after a move from the sludgy, claustrophobic (but also wonderful) streets of New York City to a little log cabin in rural Michigan, the song’s electric violins coalesce with birdlike synths as Bitch recounts an industrial capitalist hell while attempting to find beauty outside of it. It’s a psychedelic, dizzying song about mother nature as well as the onslaught of capitalism and its obsession with destroying the natural world.

How did you become a band?

I started playing violin at 4, after seeing it on Sesame Street.  I got funnelled into the classical world, and after high school, I kinda wanted to run from it all.  I started making what i thought of as “feminist theater” with my first band-mate Animal.  We didn’t think of ourselves as a band until we had released 2 albums lol.  I have been working on my new album “BITCHCRAFT” for 8 years, and have built the tracks that I play to one layer at a time, with lots of violin and synths! Now, I still don’t think of myself as a band, I think of myself as a ‘one woman machine’. 

How do you think this record is different from your past ones?

I spent more time on this album than any of my others and I think it shows.  I ran myself through way more processes of editing, down to the songwriting and song structure.  I was really going for a specific feeling, and I wasn’t afraid to throw stuff out if it wasn’t working.  This is more hook-y, more violin-forward, more BITCHCRAFTED than any of my previous albums. 

Favorite track on the record and why?

Right now, it’s “PAGES.” It’s a song that during the making of the album, I threw out all the previous verses i had written and started all over again.  I went way more specific, way more ‘JUST SAY WHAT IT IS” with the lyrics, and I feel like it paid off.  At the last minute, right before we were going to master the album, I played it for my collaborator Anne Preven, and she asked me to send her all the stems and literally re-made the beat.  It bent my head, and I almost jumped out of my boots I was so excited to hear it that way.  I had been listening to it with the original beat for so long, that I think i’m still thrilled when I hear it because it is so unexpected to me still.  

Any funny anecdotes from the time you were recording or writing the album?

Because I have carried this album with me through many cities, different housing situations and hard drives, there has also been some losses.  For example, “Divvy It Up,” I had tracked for my previous album “In Us We Trust,” and it just never made it on.  When I stared to conceive of “BITCHCRAFT,” I went back to it, listened to a bounce I had lying around, and decided to open it back up to tinker with it again.  My collaborator Roger Paul Mason, with whom I had made “In Us We Trust,” (and who plays a significant role on “BITCHCRAFT”) is also a mad scientist/traveling musician, and somehow, we lost track of the original sessions, and ALL I HAD WAS THIS MP3.  So I rebuilt the entire song, which was about 50 tracks of violins! 

When I was moving out of one of my apartments in LA, I noticed how good the acoustics sounded in my empty apartment.  I still had a few days on the lease, so I went back to the empty place and set up my little 1 mic+laptop recording studio, and recorded all the violins for “Easy Target.”  There was such a beautiful natural reverb happening!

What are the dynamics within the band? Who writes the lyrics, who’s in charge of arranging the tunes etc?  

I’m a one woman machine!  I have always been a lyricist first in my practice.  This album was a new chapter in that I did collaborate here and there on finding words I couldn’t find on my own.  Faith Soloway gave me chords I never would have found for “Another Wound.” Greg Prestopino and I wrote the bridge of “You’re The Man” together.  I found my inner coven of people I trust to give me feedback on the arrangements, or lay down drum parts, add their magic to my machine, etc.  

What’s a record that shaped your creativity?

Sinead O’Connor “The Lion and the Cobra.”  Kinnie Starr “Learning to Cook”.  Ulali “Mahk Jchi”.  Bulgarian Women’s Choir bent my head at just the right time.  Tracy Chapman’s first album.  PJ Harvey “Dry”

Who is an artist or band you look up to these days?

Gosh there are so many.  I’m excited about Tanya Tagaq’s new album.  Tegan and Sara.  Indigo Girls.  Cardi B.  

Any future projects?

I’m working on a play version of “BITCHCRAFT.”  I’m always making, always crafting.  

What does music mean to you?

It is our common language.  The pandemic made me re-appreciate that I have this art to share.  It made me see how much we all need it.  We need it to connect to our best selves. 

How would you describe your sound to someone who has never heard you?

It’s violin-centric Poet Pop! Someone described it as “Joni Mitchell set to a click track, it’s queer Cyndi Lauper. It’s neon pink, in your face, ready to hex you with its brilliance.” and I liked that!!