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Mar 23, 2023 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Craig Bingham

Tomorrow, French rock outfit Dead Chic are back with their debut EP, The Venus Ballroom. The band is the latest musical project from Damien Félix of Catfish and Bigger and Andy Balcon of Heymoonshaker, which sees the pair tapping into heady strains of bluesy rock and soul. The band debuted last year with their single, “Too Far Gone,” and returned earlier this year with a pair of singles from the EP, “Les fleurs séchées” and “The Belly of the Jungle.”

The band says of the EP, With The Venus Ballroom we wanted to capture the intensity and energy of the group on stage. We chose the Black Box Studio run by Peter Deimel, who saw artists such as Anna Calvi, The Kills, Last Shadow Puppets. An all-analogue studio that perfectly suited the sound aesthetics of Dead Chic. It was an intense four-day live session. The Venus Ballroom lays the foundations of our aesthetics; 5 pieces and an instrumental with which we want to put the listener’s imagination to work, take them into the landscapes, powerful and cinematic. With a very personal writing style and strong postures in the choice of sounds and arrangements, we want to create our own sound identity, a kind of dark rock mixture, elegant but also perfectly wild and unbridled at times.

Today, the band are sharing a final taste of the record with their new track, “You Got It,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“You Got It” opens up the EP in swaggering style, hitting hard with towering minor-key chords, percussion, and a piano hook. Félix’s vocals are worn and raspy, conjuring a magnetic interplay between the bluesy vocal melodies, guitar grooves, and stabs of horns. They then take this mix to even greater heights in the track’s latter half, delivering a gut punch of a climax laden with searing guitar work and walls of brass. The results sound raucous, raging, and refreshingly vital.

The band says of the track, “‘You Got It’ is the perfect representation of our sound which we sometimes call ‘heavy soul.’ All the ingredients. A mix that builds our sonic identity, be it Latin music through certain percussive instruments like the castanet or even the horn. We nod to a heritage of soul with catchy melodies and structure, though still allowing a presence of garage sounds to resonate throughout. Delivering as big as the tape will hold.

It was crucial for us that this recording be able to reflect the energy and fervor of our band live, and also show we can be delicate and fine. To me it looks like we got there, right?”

Check out the song below. The Venus Ballroom EP is out everywhere tomorrow, March 24th.