Kevin Bronson on October 21st, 2019

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Precious Child makes metal for pop kids, or Top 40 for goth kids. The L.A.-based artist’s synth- and bass-charged music has been called controversial, and it is at the very least challenging, especially if you’re altogether too comfortable in your preconceptions about gender identity. It’s no surprise to read that Precious Child’s favorite album is Nine Inch Nails’ “Pretty Hate Machine” (happy 30th birthday to that LP, by the way).

A multimedia artist who composed music for Neil Gaiman’s film “Dream Dangerously” and has directed numerous music videos, Precious Child mounted an interactive installation at Space Mountain Gallery in December and January during Art Basel Miami. For the new video for “Fear in the Rain (Violet Door),” Precious Child worked again with director Jordan Rennert, the cinematographer on the Cade-directed video for “Whole” (NSFW).

Filmed in White Sands, N.M., it’s an intense look at an artist putting the art in cathartic.

The song, titled in tribute to the late Rutger Hauer’s “Tears in the Rain” monologue in “Blade Runner,” is the lead single from Precious Child’s new full-length “heart.gif,” due next year.

“The new album could be considered a ‘soft metal’ or a ‘hard pop’ album,” Precious Child says. “Embracing songwriting standards, it is not experimental. Unlike prior albums, it is less explicitly existential and is personal and anecdote-based, containing stories from my exceptionally strange life. In the album and this song, I share how I’m a real person.

“The song is a true story about the dizzying conjoined fear and love of my first relationship. Because of mania, control, depression and codependency it was ultimately alienating. I needed love but only possessed fear.”

||| Watch: The video for “Fear In The Rain (Violet Door)”