Today Empress Of (a.k.a. Lorely Rodriquez) has released a new music video for “How Do You Do It,” the third single from her debut album Me, out September 11 on Terrible Records. Reflecting the deeply personal themes of Me, the video for “How Do You Do It” was filmed in Lorely’s hometown of Los Angeles and plays out like a personal travelogue giving viewers an intimate look inside the life of Empress Of. “On tour, I spend 23 hours of my day driving, flying, shaving my legs in gross venue bathrooms, sleeping on floors or in motels…to get to that one hour of bliss on stage. I wanted to make a video about this other side of being an artist,” explains Lorely.
“Me is a bold statement of intent,” exclaims Noisey in a recent interview with Empress Of. “Not just in terms of its title but also in its sound. Ignoring alt-pop’s eternal propensity to hide in the shadows, Me pushes the vocals and lyrics to the forefront, augmenting them with melodies that dig in from the outset.”
Me was produced, recorded and engineered entirely by Lorely over the course of 2014. The ten-track album plays out like diary entries; musing on the personal, the political, and everything that falls in-between. On tracks, which you can preview now, “Kitty Kat” and “Water Water,” Lorely sings candidly on street harassment and water scarcity, but mostly Lorely’s lyrics are more introspective; songs of broken relationships, new ones starting, and ultimately, self-reliance. If clarity is what she seeks, Lorely has found it in Me.
In other news, Lorely recorded a cover of Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold” for Rookie Mag’s August Theme. You can listen to that cover here: http://www.rookiemag.com/2015/08/theme-song-empress-of/
About the album Me:
The roots of Me start in an empty practice space in Brooklyn, where Lorely spent many nights dancing alone next to a little spinning silver disco ball. “After touring the EP, I realized I wanted to make music that was fun to perform live,” she says. But ultimately the city put her in a less-than-inspired headspace. Her intuitive search for a more introspective and isolated writing experience led her to unexpectedly life-changing and mind-bending solo trip to Valle de Bravo, Mexico. The isolation sent her deep inside her head, to pull out everything she wanted to pour into Me. “Every lyric on the record, I could tell you exactly what I was doing when I wrote it,” Lorely exaplins, “I wanted to write songs that gave me this feeling of reliving moments in my life.”
Empress Of Me tracklist:
- Everything Is You
- Water Water
- Standard
- How Do You Do It
- To Get By
- Kitty Kat
- Need Myself
- Make Up
- Threat
- Icon
Pre-order the album on here iTunes. Out September 11th on Terrible Records via Rhythmethod.
Links:
Empress Of Facebook
Empress Of Twitter
