London-based trio Dream Wife – vocalist Rakel Mjöll (she/her), guitarist Alice Go (she/her), bassist Bella Podpadec (they/them) – return with their first new material since 2020. A band with a reputation for performing ferocious live shows and championing bodily autonomy, Dream Wife’s new song “Leech” addresses the double standards of power. “Do you hide behind the position you hold? Do you hide behind the illusions of power? The perception of power” Rakel sings before changing gears and screaming “The leech is out for blood.”

The band says of the new single, “‘It’s an anthem for empathy. For solidarity. Musically tense and withheld, erupting to angry cathartic crescendos. The push and pull of the song lyrically and musically expands and contracts, stating and calling out the double standards of power. Nobody really wins in a patriarchal society. We all lose. We could all use more empathy. As our first song to be released in a while, we wanted to write something that feels like letting an animal out of a cage. It’s out. And it’s out for blood…”

Dream Wife released their explosive second album So When You Gonna… in 2020, which earned both a monumental #18 UK Album Chart debut and a #1 placing in the Official Record Store Chart of Independent Retailers. The record, which was the only album in the top 20 to be produced by an all women / non-male engineering team, as well as the only non-major label release, was subsequently named one of Rough Trade’s Top 10 Albums of the Year. The Marta Salogni-produced and mixed record dealt with topics such as miscarriage and gender equality.

Photo Courtesy: Harriet Brown