It’s been a tough patch of time for Bonnie Bloomgarden, lead singer of the indie/garage rock band Death Valley Girls. She lost her home and all of her belongings in the Southern California wildfires of 2025 and ended up living with her landlord for a while. Shortly after losing everything, her dog died. It’s hard to imagine going through all of that in such a short amount of time, but times like this are when musicians go to work.
Welcome To Earth, the sixth album from Death Valley Girls, was written and recorded after Bloomgarden’s difficult year. It sounds like California, or at least the version of California that exists in my head (I’ve never been). It’s bouncy in the right ways, and it’s got the scuzzy-sounding saxophone that also made us fall in love with Art d’Ecco’s latest. We don’t have to guess what a lot of the songs are about on the album: “Fire and Brimstone” is pretty obviously about the wildfires, and the album’s final track is called “How Losing Everything in the Fire Taught Me to Love Myself.” Okay, maybe that’s putting a little too neat of a bow on things, but it’s a good song.
But it’s also almost Halloween, which we take seriously here at Studio One. Naturally, that means we’re going to spin a song called “Basic Witch.” Despite its title though, and its spooky sounds, the story behind the song is quite sweet.
After the fire, Bloomgarden enrolled in a strength class with a trainer named Candy, located in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The music video for “Basic Witch” prominently features Candy, along with Exene Cervenka, lead singer of the band X. It was important to Bloomgarden to highlight the folks who were there for her.
“When I find anything that helps me, I want to share that intel with the world, so we started working on a music video idea!” she said. “I wanted her to train someone who was getting picked on like in Karate Kid. It turned into a super cute family video. A real good time.”
Welcome To Earth is available at Bandcamp and streaming services, along with the rest of Death Valley Girls’ music.
