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Aug 24, 2015 Bat For Lashes By Christopher Roberts

Last week Bat For Lashes (aka Natasha Khan) was slowly announcing something via a game of hangman on top of moody black & white photos on her Instagram and Twitter accounts and included some snippets of new music. Speculation was that she was on the verge of announcing a new Bat For Lashes album, but instead it was a completely new project: SEXWITCH is a collaboration between Khan, producer Dan Carey, and the psych-rock band TOY. The band made its live debut via a surprise set at the Green Man festival in England this past weekend and will be releasing their self-titled debut albu Below you can listen to its first single, “Helelyos.”

Khan and TOY first collaborated in 2013 for a cover of “The Bride” by Iranian musician Amir Rassaei. Similarly SEXWITCH’s album features six covers of songs by artists from different countries, including two songs each from Iran and Morocco and one song each from Thailand and America. All the tracks were recorded live in the studio and Khan had the lyrics translated to English by friends. The lone American song is Skip Spence’s “War In Peace.”

In a new interview with Pitchfork’s Laura Snapes, conducted this past weekend at Green Man, Khan discusses the album. She also reveals that she’s working on a new Bat For Lashes album, the follow-up to 2012’s excellent third album The Haunted Man, and hopes to release it next spring. She’s also directed a short film for MTV and the new Bat For Lashes album is thematically connected to a feature film she’s also writing.

In the Pitchfork interview Khan also explained the SEXWITCH name: “It came into my head because we were trying to look up beautiful Moroccan names, or names of stars or goddesses, but I thought, god, this is getting so fucking cliché, I can’t deal with this. I just thought, let’s just say what it is. When we were recording it, every time I’d do funny sex noises, me and Dan said, we’re being sexy witches. It’s a bit tongue in cheek, we’re not trying to be super cool, but I think it’s memorable. There is something very magical and dark and feminine archetypal force about it. Also, when I was singing-and this sounds ridiculous-it did feel like I was channeling some sort of ancestral feelings about witches. I kept feeling witch spirits and people that had been burned and repressed and pushed down. I just felt like I’d opened a portal-you know in Ghost, where all these dark spirits come out of the grates in the floor? I felt like something had been opened. So there is definitely a witch thing, but not because it’s now cool to be witchy and mystical, but generally about that sort of ancient feminine archetype. And also not just the feminine, not just being a woman, but there’s a quote we put in the press release because I loved it so much: about the feminine aspects in men and women, and men and women being connected to nature, power, sexuality, rebirth, regeneration. I feel like that’s in the name as well.”

SEXWITCH have one headliner show currently planned at XOYO in London on September 29. Tickets go on sale this Thursday (August 27) here. Above is the album’s artwork by Khan and Neil Krug. Below is “Helelyos,” followed by the album’s tracklist.

SEXWITCH Tracklist:

1. Ghoroobaa Ghashangan (Iran)

2. Ha Howa Ha Howa (Morocco)

3. Helelyos (Iran)

4. Kassidat El Hakka (Morocco)

5. War In Peace (North America)

6. Lam Plearn Kiew Bao (Thailand)