It feels appropriate to be pulled into the world of The Bedroom Witch as we embrace the back-end of October. But on new single “My Only,” the spiritual glide from performance artist Sepehr Mashiahof’s Los Angeles-based dark synth-pop project casts a hypnotic spell for confronting inner demons that’s fit for any time of the year. Here, the Iranian-American invites us to her scarlet room for a spellbinding twirl of healing that begins from within and extends across the shadows of underground dance floors.
“‘My Only’ is a song about coping mechanisms, like getting through difficult feelings through substance dependencies,” says Mashiahof. “It’s about those most honest moments of recognition of our own self-sabotaging behavior. We all go through it, but how do we get out of it? For me, it meant coming to terms with the fact that I am in this body, for this lifetime. Somewhere, there’s power in realizing you’re stuck with yourself.”
We’re likely to be the best kind of stuck with The Bedroom Witch, as “My Only” offers an entrancing slice of goth-pop and darkwave that sets a vivid tone for her upcoming album, A Place of Hurt, due out November 4 via Psychic Eye and Ratskin Records. And Mashiahof’s performance artist background lends itself nicely to applying a visual that’s equally captivating for the eyes as the song is for the ears.
The “My Only” video, directed by Mashiahof and her sister Sepand Mashiahof, brings the track’s yearning sentiments to the screen, as latex- and bondage-clad dancers restrain The Bedroom Witch within a ritual circle for sacrifice in a dreamlike sequence that confronts trauma and identity.
“The red room is sparse in furnishings but rich in color, and represents the tumultuous inside of our souls,” she adds. “The healers, the demons, the sacrifice and the idol are all interconnected here. It’s about having terror of the pain you know will accompany growth, but promising yourself you’ll still go far in your healing.”
Allow her “my” to become a collective “our” below.