The Death Valley Girls are totally on fire right now. It’s barely been six months since the release of their debut album, Street Venom, and the raucous Los Angeles punk band is already prepping for the release of their follow-up EP, Electric High, out early this fall. The band (made up of lead singer Bonnie Bloomgarden, Laura Kelsey on drums, Larry Schemel on guitar and Rocky on bass) is as punk as it gets, with a sound that’s closer to something you’d hear coming from a Lower East Side basement in the early ‘70s than an LA recording studio in 2014. Bloomgarden’s vocals have been described as “snotty, bratty” and full of “vicious conviction,” the guitars as “truly distant, as if they’re being recorded through a brick wall,” or as if “Larry plugged his guitar straight into a hornet hive and then kicked it”—all incredibly high praise.
Just yesterday, the Death Valley Girls released the song “Gettin’ Hard” from their upcoming 7”, as well as dates for their U.S. tour. The song is just more of what makes this band so awesome—a heavy dose of sneery, noisy punk realness for the 21st century.
They’re playing Echo Park Rising in LA tomorrow, and are touring the Northwest with my favorite Japanese all-woman punk band, Shonen Knife, this fall (!!!). You can download Street Venom and see a full list of tour dates on their Bandcamp page, and listen to “Gettin’ Hard” here.
Image via CMJ.
