WL//WH Video Premiere: NEW HAUNTS Exposes Sexual Harassment in the Night Club Scene with “The New Girl On The Dancefloor”

WL//WH Premiere NEW HAUNTS

Clubs are somewhere we go to have a good time, so understandably there are a lot of songs about having a good time in clubs – but it’s not always the case for everyone. Sexual harassment is a huge problem in that environment, and I’m tired of hearing lip service paid to the problem or having it shoved under the carpet because it’s not convenient.

New Haunts, Alice Sheridan‘s Bristol, UK-based Dark Wave Electronic solo project, is our welcome guest with the premiere of the Official Video, filmed and directed by Alastair Power, for “New Girl On The Dancefloor,” the third single lifted from New Haunts’ forthcoming fourth studio album “Hooks,” due out on November 1, 2024, via Cold Transmission Music.

This track isn’t meant to be a comfortable listen. I’m angry about this issue and the culture which enables it, and I couldn’t help thinking that when I was new to clubbing that it would have changed my experience in a positive way to hear a track about it.

An unsteady dancefloor, where frantic icy bright synth oscillations nervously flicker atop cold, taut pulses of detuned booming drum kicks and steady dry beats, sways in and out of constricting eerie and gritty doom-laden frequencies around “The New Girl On The Dancefloor”, whose powerful and haunting vocals layer with clubby whispers and screams, before rising into an evocative climax of unrestrained fury.

I want those affected to know that there are people who won’t tolerate it, and I want to make the people contributing to the problem uncomfortable. What better way to do that than write a catchy song about it for the dancefloor?

The Official Video by Alastair Power begins by showing a black dusty stain on a surreal white wall where hands and a mask hang like a predatory spectre. Three timelines contain the fragments of trauma. One, a gauze-wrapped zombie, forever fearful of the thought of being groped. The second stands beneath the phantom menace and will soon wear a mask herself to cope with social anxiety. The third is a sad, haunted musician who places herself at a distance behind a grey veil of disconnection. These are some of the real, lasting effects caused by sexual harassment.

New Haunts‘ new single “The New Girl On The Dancefloor,” is out today, along with the pre-order of the artist’s fourth album, “Hooks,” which will be released in Vinyl /CD /Digital formats, on November 1, 2024, via Cold Transmission Music. LP’s Pre-Order link here.

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