THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “American Cockroach, the latest EP from Deap Vally — the Los Angeles duo of Lindsey Troy and Julie Edwards — was co-produced by Deap Vally and Josiah Mazzaschi (Jesus & Mary Chain, Idles) at The Cave Studio, Los Angeles.
Say Deap Vally, “American Cockroach is a collection of songs we’ve been working on for a while, including collaborations with Jennie Vee (Eagles of Death Metal) and Ayse Hassan (Savages), that run the gamut from deeply personal, to outright satire and everything in between. These are songs for the underdog, the outlaw, the defeated, for days when you feel like no one understands you or you can’t do anything right.”
Of first single Give Me a Sign, Troy says, “[This] is a deeply personal song. It will always mark a very specific time in my life. Sonically, it’s adventurous territory for us, unlike anything else we’ve ever put out before. Produced by longtime friend and engineer Josiah Mazzaschi, who recorded our very first demo back in 2012, the use of unusual instrumentation like the Optigan elevates the sense of melancholy and anguish this song is so heavy with, and we love it very much.”
Troy and Edwards have always relished the challenge of working within the limitations of being a two-piece, but after two records (2012’s Sistrionix and 2016’s Femejism, produced by Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and years of touring as a duo, they felt an urge to reinvent their writing and recording process. Rather than be locked in a battle of wills between two parties, they sought collaborators to break the tie and allow for an organic, majority-rules creative process. They released a collaborative album with Flaming Lips, as Deap Lips, in 2020, and worked on songs for their recent Digital Dream EP with jennylee (Warpaint), KT Tunstall and Peaches, Soko and Jamie Hince (The Kills). They also experimented with self-producing for the first time, working with Mazzaschi.
Finally addressing the eternal question, “Will you ever add a third member?”, they decided it would be more of a creative adventure to collaborate with a bunch of different artist friends rather than commit to one. The result is a true creative renaissance for the duo, more liberating than they could ever have imagined.”
