In April, L.A. Witch, a three-piece all-female psychedelic rock band, released their third full-length album, DOGGOD, with Suicide Squeeze Records. It’s the perfect soundtrack for night drives through neon-lit downtown or sunset treks out into the desert. The group’s taut, precise sound—a blend of psych, garage, surf, and, as heard on DOGGOD, new post-punk textures—is of a piece with the rapport that Sade Sanchez, Irita Pai, and Ellie English have developed over more than a decade of playing music together.
The band is taking the new album on the road, with upcoming shows in Santa Cruz, San Francisco, and Pioneertown. On Friday, May 23, the trio will take the stage at Los Angeles’s Lodge Room. It’s a hometown victory lap: Sanchez (guitar and lead vocals), whose parents named her after the iconic soul singer Sade, grew up in North Hollywood. English, the drummer, was raised in nearby Burbank, and bassist Pai attended high school in Diamond Bar. The group formed in 2011, after an abusive boyfriend forbade Sanchez to play music with men, sending her in search of female collaborators. A friend connected her with Pai and founding drummer Crystal Nava; when Nava moved to New York, Sanchez recruited English, with whom she had played in a two-piece band as teenagers.
“We’ve been friends for a really long time, and we’re like sisters at this point, like family,” Sanchez says. “When I first write something, I want to send it to the girls. There’s a lot of trust that we put in each other.”
Trust is a consistent theme on DOGGOD. The new album introduced a goth new-wave edge into the band’s sound: Think Hole meets Joy Division, candlelight casting shadows on nine songs with lyrics exploring the razor’s edge between devotion and debasement. On “I Hunt You Prey,” a relationship gone wrong becomes a journey into the night. “I’ve been driving / In your direction,” Sanchez sings in her deadpan growl. “Deserted / From your affections.” Pai’s slow-burn bass joins the rumbling of Sanchez’s guitar and the new ingredient of shimmering synths played by Sanchez and producer Arnaud Rebotini, against the anxious clip of English’s cymbal. L.A. Witch bring girl-group intensity to questions of the heart.
DOGGOD fades in and out of L.A. Witch’s after-hours atmosphere, powered by noir post-punk bass lines on songs like “The Lines” that blast the listener into bright light. “There are some songs [on DOGGOD] with a colder vibe,” says Sanchez about the group’s evolving sound. “Our influences have expanded.” L.A. Witch also locked in their aesthetic, which centers Sanchez, Pai, and English as cool goths, sexy and tough in a way that might appeal to men but is definitely for the girls. “We love Halloween and we love horror films and the goth aesthetic and murder-mystery podcasts, occult-type stuff,” Sanchez says.
The band recorded DOGGOD in Paris at Motorbass Studios on Rue des Martyrs in Montmartre, channeling the city’s medieval history and Gothic architecture into the album. Sanchez now lives half-time in Montmartre. “As an artist, I think it’s a lot easier to discover new stuff in Paris,” she says. “There are more bands touring through France. Economically, it’s more difficult to tour the U.S.”
When she’s in L.A., Sanchez lives in the Valley, close to where she grew up; Pai is based in Little Tokyo, near the band’s rehearsal space downtown. “That’s our home base,” Pai explains. “We always meet there to go to the gym and practice. It’s like our second home.”
Sanchez, Pai, and English are proud to represent their home city. “L.A. Witch really does represent L.A.,” Pai says. “When we’re on the road, you see how other places are not as diverse. Maybe you can reach out to that person in the Midwest who doesn’t feel seen, and they can come to our show and feel part of this movement. Kids come up to us and say, ‘We don’t see people like you guys onstage.’”•
Lisa Locascio Nighthawk is the chair of the Antioch MFA and the executive director of the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. Her work has appeared in the Believer, the New York Times, and Electric Literature. Her first novel, Open Me, was published by Grove Atlantic in 2018. She writes a newsletter called Not Knowing How.
