Artist Bio:

Year Of The Witch was born in transit. In the interest of self-sufficiency, HXXS – aka Jeannie Colleene and Gavin Neves – initially recorded their debut album during a six month tour spent living out of their van. When inspiration struck (and it did so often), they’d record in parking lots, hotel rooms, laundromats— anywhere they happened to pull over. What emerged from these pit stops, strangely enough, was an album about moving forward.

As with much of the art created in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Year Of The Witch sizzles with the fresh sting of political anguish. Instead of firing off platitudes about a nation divided, however, Neves and Colleene choose to look inward at how this divide affects familial relationships. On “Hard To Tell,” the duo sing, ‘it runs in the family, and they spread it all over, like forest to fire’. Like the California wildfires that were a fixture of their childhood – Neves is from San Jose and Colleene hails from Bakersfield – beliefs are inherited passively, and have equal capacity for destruction. And while the political climate of the time is a palpable force, the album remains anchored, always, in the personal. “I’m not asking for sympathy,” they sing—with the help of TV On The Radio’s Kyp Malone— “cut loose these ties.” Year Of The Witch finds HXXS rifling through the ashes, working to salvage the roots.