Video: BIIANCO, ‘Rice Crispies’

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BIIANCO (Photo by Chase Leonard)

BIIANCO is the new solo venture of Gabrielle Wortman, one-half of the art-pop duo Smoke Season and before that the driving force in the band TEMP3ST. There’s even a solo album in her back catalog titled “The Secret Life of Gabby,” but as Wortman has proven over the last decade or so, we have many lives and the one that counts is now.

The new persona finds Wortman making bold electronic pop with au courant production — yes, she’s joined the vocoder army, as if that needed any more soldiers, and borrows from house music for songs that pack a punch. Her topical milieu is female empowerment, and what’s notable with BIIANCO is that the artist is saying exactly what she wants to say in the way she wants to say it. That is, the music is all written, performed and produced by her. The new BIIANCO songs sprang from her participation in an all-female production retreat in Joshua Tree; afterward, she wrote, played, engineered and produced a full EP.

Grammy-winning engineer Matthew Wiggins provides the mixes on the singles “Get Up” and “Rice Crispies.” The former is an effects-laden, slow-burning manifesto in which the singer declares “You wanna watch me fall / You gonna watch me / So watch me get up get up get up this time.” The latter, a sensual dancefloor number about being in the moment, has nothing to do with cereal, unless it’s the snap-crackle-pop in morning intimacy.

MK McGehee (who helmed the most recent Smoke Season video, among others) directs the stylish video for “Rice Crispies.” It’s what’s for breakfast.

||| Watch: The video for “Rice Crispies”

||| Also: Stream the song here, along with “Get Up”

||| Live: BIIANCO, along with Flavia and King Elle Noir, performs as part of Songbird Sessions at Hot Shot Mufflers in Highland Park on Sept. 28. Info.