There’s something simmering in Rosetta West’s latest offering, a kind of mystical unrest that brews just beneath the cracked surface of blues-rock tradition. With their new track ‘Dora Lee (Gravity)’, the long-running Chicago outfit remind us that the blues can still cast spells, especially when filtered through tanks, tombstones, and timeless goddesses.
The video fuses antique femininity with militaristic dread. One moment you’re watching divine figures like Ishtar and Hecate flicker across the screen in the form of ancient sculpture and celestial iconography, the next you’re staring down the barrel of a tank with frontman Joseph Demagore in uniform. It’s more of a séance conducted over distortion pedals and static footage.
Musically, ‘Dora Lee (Gravity)’ slaps in with grit and gravitas. The band lean into the raw immediacy of live performances, capturing a track that’s more incantation than composition. It’s swampy, jagged, and tightly coiled; blues-rock with its teeth bared and soul cracked wide open. Demagore’s vocals burn slow but fierce, riding atop the thunder of Mike Weaver’s drumming and the hypnotic churn of Herf Guderian’s low end.
Rosetta West have always wandered outside the well-lit paths of genre, folding in elements of psychedelia and global folk into their sound long before it was fashionable. But ‘Dora Lee (Gravity)’ feels like something else, like a ritual disguised as a rock song. Shot at the storied Gravity Studios, the track comes from a session series meant to bottle lightning in real time. And they’ve done just that.
As underground survivors with decades of material and a global cult following, Rosetta West are following visions. And in ‘Dora Lee (Gravity)’, those visions are loud, haunted, and defiantly alive. A message from the other side, equal parts warning and war cry.
