L.A. Witch is—yes, you guessed it, founded by L.A. natives. The psych, sexy, moody-sounding trio just dropped their new LP, DOGGOD, on April 4, 2025. Fortunately, I got to catch two out of the three lovely ladies, Sade Sanchez and Irita Pai, for a chat. The very first time I heard this band, I was getting a cherub playing a guitar tattooed on my arm in my friend’s basement. I remember their song, “Brian” was playing for about 45 seconds before I pulled out my phone to Shazam it. I’ve been a fan ever since.
Opener photo: Rhyan Santos
I actually am so bummed. I saw you guys are playing at Hi-Dive at the end of April in Denver, but unfortunately I will be in Salt Lake City settling Post Malone, so I can’t go. I’m so sad.
Sade: Oh, dang. But that’s so cool, though, Post Malone.
Yeah, I can’t attend a lot of shows I actually want to see during our busy season. Actually, you guys work with Art Aguilar, right? He does some of your artwork? He did artwork in our first issue of Fantom.
Sade: Oh, I think I saw. It was something with hot pink and stuff? That looked really cool.
Yeah, lime green and hot pink. Yeah, he did the artwork when I interviewed Amyl and the Sniffers and Toody Cole from Dead Moon. That’s how I met him. He was like, “You need to interview L.A. Witch.” All of his artwork is fucking awesome.
Irita: Yeah, and he’s great. He designed our tour T-shirts. He’s a good friend of ours. We love him.
Yeah, I’ve actually never met him. Every time I’m in L.A., we miss each other, but he’s awesome. So, are you guys overwhelmed or anxious at all about dropping your album?
Sade: I think, for me, when it gets closer to the date, maybe I’ll start to feel a little bit more of anxiety, but right now we’re still kind of a little bit away from it. So, it feels distant and unreal right now. But more than anything, I’m just
feeling relieved that we’re finally putting it out there because it’s something that I’m guessing all of us are really proud of. We put a lot of work into it, so it’ll be cool to finally have that out.
Irita: I was going to say all of the above.
I figured it’s a shift from being zoned in and working on music. I’m sure the tour part is exciting, but the social side with the press would get exhausting or overwhelming for me.
Irita: No, you’re absolutely right.
Sade: Yeah, it can be at times. I can’t even imagine. I saw your press release with your new music video of the song “The Lines” where the dancer is wearing a chainmail outfit. I’m a huge chainmail fan. I just recently broke my leg and started learning how to make chainmail jewelry, bras and thongs.
Sade: Irita does chain mail, too.
Irita: Yeah, I noticed your necklace.
I made this one. I have random chainmail shit in my apartment. After the break and couldn’t skate, I was like, “What do I do when all I can do is sit here.” So I started learning.
Sade: That’s perfect.
Irita: It’s therapeutic. Yeah.
Totally therapeutic. You could just listen to a record or watch a movie while doing it. Did you make that shirt that was in the press release photo?
Irita: So it’s this girl, Lauren. Her company is called Plain Chain, and she’s been doing it for a long time. I was actually asking her for tips. She’s such a pro. The day of the video, she was sitting there, making adjustments and stuff. Yeah, she’s great.
I have a friend in New York that does it for a living, too. Her name is also Lauren and her company is Psychopomp Steel. I was also asking her for tips. Sorry, I’m getting off track. Do you guys have a memorable show that made you so happy that you wanted to cry?
Sade: For sure. Actually, just last night, I was watching a video of us playing South Africa. We were in Cape Town. We were playing this festival, and I did cry after the show because I think all of us were probably super overwhelmed. The crowd was super loving, super sweet. The energy was so rad, and I don’t think we had experienced anything like that before. I think we were all super happy. We just couldn’t believe it. I think too, just going to a country that feels so foreign. Why would I ever go to Africa? That sounds crazy. That’s one memorable show.
Another memorable show I can think of is in Mexico, one of the first times we played in Guadalajara, and we all took acid right before the show. I have no idea why we did that. Actually, that show is also on YouTube. I watched that, and I’m like, “Dude, it’s actually not that bad.” It was pretty cool. Those are two shows that I can think of that were pretty rad.
Irita: Oh, God. I think we had done a radio interview right before then, and you could see all of our eyes were so bugged out.
Sade: Oh, my gosh.
Irita: But for me, I think there was a show in Australia in Melbourne we played, and we just had such a good show that we ended up flashing each other. It was this weird thing we used to do when we had a really good show.
Like flashing? Wait, on stage you flashed the crowd?
Irita: No, no. It was private.
Sade: We flashed each other backstage.
I was about to say, I did not know it was like that! I have always wondered about taking acid or shrooms before performing. For me, I overdid that shit when I was in my early twenties, so anytime someone tells me that they take acid before they perform, it’s pretty gnarly to me. Like maybe you’re in your own world of you three on stage.
Sade: That’s not something we do often. I always play sober, for the most part, but yeah, there’s been maybe two or three times where we took mushrooms or micro-dosed or something like that. But yeah, it’s not something that we do often. It’s something we usually save for a special occasion, or a day off, or the right place, the right time, right people, you know.
Irita: Yeah, the right festival or something like that. But, I mean, for me, I think when we were on acid, I felt like I could feel the music more, for some reason. I don’t really know. You don’t really focus on anything else but the music. For me, that was my experience.
So, you’re locked in. Yeah, I’m sure it would be amazing. I never really microdosed is my problem. I always really went balls deep. Do you have a dream venue that you eventually want to play?
Irita: Red Rocks.
All right, well, I’ll set that up since I work there all the time. Have you guys been before?
Irita: No, we’ve never been, but it always looks so amazing. I’ve seen so many bands play there, and it looks incredible.
Sade: Yeah, like super surreal.
I may be jaded since I work there often, but when I work with new artists that have never been it is very cute and wholesome watching how excited they are. Maybe you guys will play there one day, and then I’ll get to work your show. What is it like being an all-female band in a male-dominant world, kind of, the struggles of it?
Sade: I’m always really proud of the fact that we’re an all-female band. I’ve always thought that was really cool. It’s nice to kind of fight the… not fight, but when you walk into a venue, and people don’t expect you to be good, and you can sense that based on the way they’re treating you. And you don’t say anything. You don’t try to fight. Treat everyone with respect no matter how weird they might be treating you. Then once we all start playing a song, you can feel the shift in attitude towards you where you start getting treated with respect. I’ve always found that to be a really powerful moment for me and for the rest of the band as well. Because it’s a cool way to fight that mentality is by just fucking doing it and
showing them with your actions and with your music and stuff. That’s one thing that I can say personally, for myself. Just like we lead by example.
It is probably pretty cool to see someone underestimating you and then they’re like, “Oh, shit.” That’s probably super powerful to see.
Irita: Yeah, and when we first started, there actually weren’t that many all-girl bands out there. I think we met a lot of really amazing female musicians who helped us along the way. For example, our first EP we did with the help of our friend, Paige [Stark], who’s in this band Tashaki Miyaki, and she produced our first EP. She really pushed for us to get music out there. And it’s so funny because she’s actually directing our next music video, so it’s very much a community that we’ve built for ourselves.
Sade: Yeah, it’s coming very soon.
Irita: We’re not in it, and which is kind of refreshing because we are usually in all of our music videos, but these last ones we haven’t been able to. Like I said, we’ve been really lucky to work with our friends who are also creative directors and stuff like that. It’s got a 70’s horror movie vibe.
I love that. Our magazine has a similar theme on occasion. I will send some over to you. It’s probably cool being behind the scenes and almost helping direct how all the music videos go now versus being in front of the camera. If you guys don’t have one already, if you were to get an ass tattoo, what would it be?
Sade: Damn. I don’t know.
Irita: My cat’s name.
Sade: I’m like, what would look good on my ass? I don’t know. I guess like a giant fucking heart. Something traditional, I guess.
How about any recurring dreams?
Sade: No, my dreams are super surreal or like probably everybody else’s. It just makes no sense. You don’t know why it happened. You really don’t understand what the purpose of it is. And even when you’re explaining it to someone, you don’t know. It just makes no sense, and you’re like, “I don’t know how I know this, but in the dream I knew that this is what the situation was.” But when I explain it, it’s not at all what was happening. I can’t think of any particular dreams. My dreams are pretty wild, though.
Irita: I have this weird recurring dream, and I’ve heard that other people also have this. It’s when you’re stuck in a shopping mall, in a very zombie-like situation. I don’t know what it means. Is that consumerism?
