Actress Vera Farmiga’s Band The Yagas to Release Debut Album Next Month

Stick with me here—metal is basically the music genre equivalent to horror movies. Not like every metal song scores a horror movie, and not like every horror movie carries the same weight as the scariest of horror flicks, but you get what I mean. So it makes sense that one of horror’s faves, Academy Award-nominated actress Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring, Hawkeye), has dipped her toe (act actually, her whole ass foot) into the music world with her psych-metal band The Yagas. They’re releasing a debut album called Midnight Minuet, and they’ve already shared its first single, “Life of a Widow,” of which you can listen to below.

Farmiga said this of The Yaga’s new single:
“The song is aching to feel the presence of a deceased loved one. It’s a soul’s journey of yearning, pleading to crack the unbearable silence of solitude, that Vantablack void, just to hear your love’s voice once again, to feel your love’s touch again.

“The protagonist in our song wanders through her misery, she navigates through mad midnight moments of throbbing despair. She begs to feel less alone. She demands to feel the presence of her lost love. And she won’t stop wailing until he’s there.

“It’s about taking those sudden, violent jabs of red-hot grief, feeling pummelled and clobbered by desperation and crying out to the dearly departed for help and reconnection.”

The Yagas’s keyboardist and Farmiga’s husband Renn Hawkey, who shares his other band Deadsy with Cher and Gregg Allman’s son Elijah Blue Allman, said this about his contributions to both bands:

“Producing Midnight Minuet was very cathartic for me. I felt the need to prove to myself that I could make great music outside of [Hawkey’s other band] Deadsy, which, for the past 25 years, had been my only writing/recording partnership. This was a very different creative experience for me.

“I often felt in Deadsy like I was playing in someone else’s playground – I knew the rules, I mastered the slide and the monkey bars, but I felt like a visitor. Midnight Minuet just felt different. The Yagas built a new playground together, made up of our respective life experiences with equal ownership. We are the sum of our parts. When this kind of synergy exists, you grab it, nurture it, and give it a life.”

Midnight Minuet was mixed by Grammy nominee Brian Virtue (Deftones, 30 Seconds to Mars) and mastered by Grammy winner Emily Lazar (Beck, Coldplay). It comes out on April 25, with an album release show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on April 5.

Midnight Minuet tracklist:

01. The Crying Room
02. I Am
03. Life Of A Widow
04. Anhedonia
05. Pendulum
06. Charade
07. Bridle
08. Pullover
09. She’s Walking Down
10. Midnight Minuet