Video: Happy Hollows, ‘Feel the Moon’

Kevin Bronson on June 27th, 2017

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Long before women and female-fronted rock bands organized to fly the gender banner, there was Sarah Negahdari, warrior, mystic and eccentric … yelper, screamer and guitar-tapping shredder … frontwoman of Happy Hollows, aka The Happy Hollows. Their first release, 2008’s “Imaginary” EP, cast the trio — then, Negahdari, bassist Chris Mahoney and Chris Hernandez (who’s been replaced by a rotating cast of drummers) — as next-in-line to the Pixies, Bikini Kill and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Silver Lake heads exploded when they played “Colors” live, and “Lieutenant” and “Tambourine” hold up pretty well. Both re-appeared on their debut album “Spells” (self-released in 2009, re-released a couple years later with label support), but by the time 2013’s sophomore album “Amethyst” came around they’d added dirty synths to their gnarly guitar-driven rock.

The sonic progression toward darker New Wave continues on “Concordia,” the Hollows’ third full-length, arriving Sept. 8. As with “Amethyst,” Negahdari and Mahoney worked with producer Lewis Pesacov (Best Coast, Valley Queen, Winter, et al). And coming a year after the lead song “Way Home,” the new single “Feel the Moon” throbs urgently in the vein of Siouxsie and the Banshees or Divinyls, with Negahdari’s acrobatic vocals flitting all over the insistent beat. The moon’s energy is a metaphor in director Josh Anderson’s video for the single, which finds Negahdari escaping, being chased, being rescued and then practicing a little witchy magic.

||| Watch: the video for “Feel The Moon”