PHOTOGRAPHY BY JUSSY

In the two years since we last spoke to Zolita, the singer-songwriter has continued to showcase her beloved brand of lesbian witch-pop with infectious anthems such as Shut Up and Cry, Oblivion and Bedspell. All three appear on her concept debut album, titled Evil Angel, a thirteen-track collection that depicts a relationship with a former lover. It’s relatable, filled to the brim with fresh ear-worms and queer as hell. Who’s doing it like Zolita right now? We’ll wait. We’ll be here for a long time, but we’ll wait.

“There is definitely more representation, but for queer women, it’s still so limited,” she tells GAY TIMES. “A lot of the visual representation we have are period pieces, or toxic, but I don’t go into it thinking I need to make perfect representation, because at this point, it’s second nature.” She adds: “I just want to do witchcraft and have it be really gay with a really great aesthetic. I want to give it to everybody.” 

To commemorate the release of Evil Angel – out today! – we caught up with Zolita over Zoom to discuss her long-awaited debut album, the lack of unapologetically femme queer women in the music industry, and why LGBTQ+ people have always viewed witchcraft as an “alternative religion”.

The album is finally here! How excited are you to get Evil Angel out there?I’m so excited, I feel like it’s been such a long time coming! I used to have this idea in my mind that I needed to be older to put out an album, or I needed to be with a label or have some sort of success before I put it out. Then, I realised there’s no rules. I’m a storyteller first and foremost, which is why the music videos play such a big role in my work. I think currently in the music industry, the right way to do it is single, single, single, single and don’t put out a full album, and by the time you put out the full album, there’s like one new song on it.

I feel like that’s good for your business, or whatever, spreading out the content, but I feel like my favourite artists don’t do it like that; someone like Beyonce or Solange or people that put out really conceptual pieces that you have to engage with and sit down with. I’m really excited to release this, and I made a short film to go along with it, that’ll be coming out in January. I went to New York to shoot that last month, it’s a ten-minute short film, narrative dialogue. All of the songs are diegetic in it, so it’s like when I turn the radio, a little piece of one of the songs will be on, when I run into the gas station, you’ll hear in the background one of the songs, so it’s more like part of the world in the movie.

Why was Evil Angel the right title for your debut?
Drake has a song, and it was about two years ago when I was writing Truth Tea. I had two days with the producer that I work with a lot and we wrote Truth Tea. I was like, ‘I want to write another song that also kind of captures the same ideas as Truth Tea, but in a different way.’ I was pulling out the idea of Evil Angel and Drake has a song, Final Fantasy, where he says, “I need it nasty, like Evil Angel” and Evil Angel is actually hardcore porn production company! So, Drake shouts out the porn at the beginning of the song and I thought the phrase was so cool. It captures the idea of somebody that comes across so angelic and sweet and beautiful and then has such a dark inside, and it captures that duality in such a nice way, so I wanted to run with that. It’s two years since I wrote Evil Angel and I’m still inspired by the phrase.