Emerging out of the Pacific Northwest in 2021 and later relocating to Joshua Tree, Calif., This Lonesome Paradise is as much a living, breathing product of its hallucinatory high-desert environment as its reverb-rattled noir-Americana is a direct reflection of it. With the new Death Motels (Bad Vibes Good Friends), the quartet has taken the next step into the boundless cinematic landscape that’s been teased in its previous work. Available Friday, the album is accompanied by a three-part video series that brings primary songwriter Ray Béchard’s strikingly vivid (and disturbing) narratives careening to life.
“Death Motels is a mirror of the way my mind projects the current state of society,” says Béchard. “These sounds and motifs are a culmination of the emotional weight of existing in a diseased reality. But without darkness, there is no light. And without love, there is no fear. So lean in and enjoy the unknown spaces in between.”
In lieu of a standard track-by-track run-through, Béchard breaks down the visuals below.
—Hobart Rowland
Episode 1: “Let Us Prey”
“The opening chapter introduces us to the protagonist: a genre- and gender-neutral figure wandering the wasteland, haunted by fragments of memory and myth. They’re an elusive, mythic guide—half spirit, half shaman, half memory—who ushers the viewer deeper into the ritual at each stage. Drifting through desolate desert and windmill-strewn horizons, the protagonist is as unsettling as the backdrop. The tone is one of invocation—a prelude to the transformation still to come.”
Episode 2: “Changelings”
“Here, the world erupts into menace. Marauding motorcycle gangs prowl the desert highways by day. By night, they dissolve into ritual, their leather and chrome replaced by masks and firelight. Faces shift, allegiances fracture and the protagonist is pulled deeper into the mystery of their own past. Ultraviolet cocktails glow with scorpion venom—otherworldly sacraments echoing the corrupted milk in A Clockwork Orange. The desert becomes both battleground and mirror, reflecting the protagonist’s fractured identity.”
Episode 3: “Shadow Of The Blue Moon”
“The final chapter converges into sacrifice. Under the spectral glow of the blue moon, the gangs are fully transformed into cult figures, and the desert is a stage for blood and transcendence. The protagonist emerges as both catalyst and victim, their forgotten past revealed in flickers of Polaroid memory. The ritual ends in an offering, the desert claiming its due.”
We’re proud to premiere This Lonesome Paradise’s Death Motels:
