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Feb 01, 2023 By Mark Redfern Photography by Neto Velasco

LA goth-rock band Death Valley Girls are releasing a new album, Islands in the Sky, on February 24 via Suicide Squeeze. Now they have shared its latest single, “Magic Powers,” via a music video. The band’s bassist/co-lead singer Samantha Westervelt directed the video, which features the band in a video game. Watch it below.

The band’s main singer Bonnie Bloomgarden had this to say about the “Magic Powers” in a press release: “I was walking down the street, and all of the sudden it dawned on me that almost all the things that kids bullied me about, or I got in trouble for in school, or was told would make me never amount to anything, were actually my magic powers! My voice isn’t too high, or funny, it’s how I cast my spells! I’m not a bad student, I love learning, and being a seeker! And I’m not a crazy person with weird ideas, that will never fit into society, I’m a witch, and I have magic powers!”

Westervelt had this to say about the video: “This was a really exciting video to work on. The concept of the song and the concept of the video go hand-in-hand: facing challenges in life are part of the obstacle course we go through when we are training to get Magic Powers. No situation is ever going to be perfect and mistakes or adversity will challenge us, but if we stay true to who we are in the face of the lessons we’re served, and try try try again no matter what stands in our way, we can have magic powers. I am a firm believer in reincarnation, manifestation, and divine timing, and the video also plays around with those ideas, in addition to playing with a recurring theme from our ‘What Are the Odds’ video (i.e., living in a simulated world).”

In September, Death Valley Girls previously shared the album track “It’s All Really Kind of Amazing.” When the album was announced in November they shared its second single, “What Are the Odds,” which was one of our Songs of the Week. Then in January they shared the next single, “Sunday,” via a music video.

In a previous press release, Bloomgarden elaborated on the album, which was initially conceived while she was bed-ridden with a mysterious illness from November 2020 to March 2021: “When I was sick, I started to wonder if it would be possible to write a record with messages of love to my future self. This was really the first time that I consciously thought about my own suffering and what future me might need to hear to heal. I struggled so much in my life with mental health, abuse, PTSD, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere. And I don’t want anyone—including my future self—to suffer ever again. I realized that if we are all part of one cosmic consciousness, as we [Death Valley Girls] believe, then Islands in the Sky could serve not only as a message of love and acceptance to myself, but also from every self to every self, because we are all one!”

The band’s last album, Under the Spell of Joy, came out in 2020 via Suicide Squeeze. It featured songs “The Universe” (one of our Songs of the Week) and “Hold My Hand” (another one of our Songs of the Week).

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