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Jan 09, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Gabrielle Riouah L’Imperatrice

Parisian disco six-piece, L’Impératrice have released their latest single, “Peur des Filles.” The sarcastic new wave single is the second from the band’s upcoming second album, Tako Tsubo, coming March 26. The record takes its name from broken heart syndrome, a condition where the heart deforms due to intense emotional stress. Late last year L’Imperatrice debuted their first single from the record, “Anomlie Bleue,” a ballad described as “halfway between Giorgio Moroder and George Orwell with a heady melody like the warm perfume of a winter evening.”

The band’s new track, translated as “Afraid of Girls,” is exactly the sort of infectious, disco-inflected track L’Imperatrice does so well. The intro’s slasher movie strings quickly give way to a playful funk groove and singer Flore Benguigui’s intimate vocal performance. Beneath the killer dance style, the band also pulls off some scathing social commentary, all with hilarious tongue-in-cheek wit. The video, featuring direction from Aube Perrie, expertly mixes B-movie camp, retro ‘60s style, and buckets of blood as the man’s world is invaded by killer women.

As Benguigui explained to BlackBook, “Facing the long-awaited feminist wave that has been washing over the modern patriarchy for the past few years, some men, too frightened to see their alpha male status endangered, have perpetuated crazy terrifying legends about hysterical women, half-humans/half-demons, ready to destroy our world in a bloodbath. ‘Peur Des Filles’ reuses all those clichés pushed to extremes, to denounce their absurdity in a cynical and savage ’70s B-movie, narrated from one of those men’s point of view, not so long ago in a manaxy far, far away…” Check out the single below and watch for Tako Tsubo out March 26.