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The Dead Betties have spent their entire career as trailblazers when it comes to ferocious and definitively queer rock music. The NYC-based trio of lead singer/bassist Joshua Ackley, guitarist Eric Shepherd, and drummer Derek Pippin today announce the brand new Whitey EP due out November 21 via Rotten Princess Records. Whitey is the latest chapter in the Dead Betties’ constantly forward-thinking career, channelling the righteous fury that anyone with a pulse and a conscience has felt in the last decade and alchemizing it into their most immediate and passionate music to date.
The EP’s figurative door is kicked open with the crunchy and driving lead single “Whatever, Anyway,” released today alongside an official video. The song draws from Ackley’s disdain for what he calls “cowboy cosplay” in U.S. popular culture. “We’re seeing it a lot in popular culture and music, and you even see a lot of queer white artists putting on cowboy drag,” he says. “I find that very offensive, because I’m from the Four Corners in New Mexico—a border town on the Navajo Reservation—and the Navajo people are incredibly beautiful, resilient, and have dealt with racism on a scale that I don’t think anyone else in the country has dealt with historically. Cowboys stole land and carried out genocide, so cowboy culture is actually nostalgia-washing as well as a really dark appropriation and a bad gimmick.”
Watch / Share: “Whatever, Anyway” Video
Ackley and the Dead Betties put even more of themselves into Whitey than ever before, self-producing the EP to give it their own personal stamp. “We’re ready to keep doing what we set out to do when we all moved to New York at 19 and we set out to push angry queer music into the public domain,” Ackley says while talking about what this EP represents. “I’m really proud of what we’ve managed to pull off in our career—and now we’re sitting back and looking at what’s happening in the world and realizing that, not only is it really time for us to do what we set out to do, but it’s our responsibility, because we’re the adults now. It’s on us as a society to do better and actually put out the art that we want to hear, instead of sitting back and complaining about not hearing it.”
With Whitey, the Dead Betties continue to shape the world they want to see and cement their legacy as queer rock vanguards, with results that are deeply felt and unforgettable. NYC fans can join the punk rock revolution at their EP release party at Union Pool on November 21.
Whitey EP tracklist:
2. Whitey
3. Game Over
4. Girls! Girls! Girls! (Liz Phair cover)
5. Good Victim
