Video: The Warlocks, ‘Dear Son’

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The Warlocks (Photo by David Desenski)

More than two decades on, through ups and downs and enough band members to stage a small festival, the Warlocks remain the group you’re most likely to find in the black light of a basement party where the host is spinning Velvet Underground, Spacemen 3 and Brian Jonestown Massacre records.

The psych-rock troupers return Friday with their 10th album and third for Cleopatra Records, “The Chain.” It’s largely a concept album revolving around “a Bonnie and Clyde-ish twentysomething couple who rob a bank but get caught and then are cast down the bottomless pit of our justice system,” main man Bobby Hecksher says. “The main characters, Rocky and Diamond, come from different means and thus have very different outcomes. It’s a loose collection of ‘you got fucked and swept under the rug’ type feelings revealed amid happy songs about their relationship, provided as a kind of relief.”

The band — Hecksher along with John Christian Rees, Earl V. Miller, Christopher DiPino, Cesar A. Reyes and Jason Anchondo — made the album with Rob Campanella (Brian Jonestown Masscre, the Quarter After) at Campanella’s Lake Hollywood Studio.

The Warlocks are playing a score to the mythical tale in the “Dear Son” video directed by Vicente Cordero as the song swirls into an ennui-soaked haze. Likewise, the first single “Double Life” floats lazily on a cushion of astral guitar tones and genteel drone — unthreatening but subtly intoxicating.

||| Watch: The video for “Dear Son”

||| Also: Stream: “Double Life”