Sad13 is ready for Halloween with new music video, Tiny Desk Concert, and Inquirer feature

Of course the week before Halloween would be a busy one for Philly’s favorite “frontdemon,” Sadie Dupuis of Sad13 and Speedy Ortiz. Haunted Painting, her new solo album as Sad13, came out last month, and she just shared a sufficiently creepy lyric video for the unsettling track “The Crow.”

“The Crow” sees Dupuis dealing with personal grief in the best way she knows — by making art. And although it was written pre-pandemic, it resonates the collective grief and loss we’ve felt this year. “Who dares find joy in this terror?,” she sings.

Dupuis explained the inspiration behind Haunted Painted in an interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Memory and grief, and obsession over those two things, is the through line,” she told Dan DeLuca.

But though the album has some dark themes, Dupuis interprets them in a more lighthearted way time of year. Decked out in devil costumes, Dupuis and bandmates (or “coven of musical demons”) Zoë Brecher and Audrey Zee Whitesides gathered virtually to record a Tiny Desk (Home) Concert for NPR Music in true 2020 style. Though, for the record, Sad13 is fully in favor of wearing costumes 12 months a year.

Find Haunted Painting on Bandcamp. $1 of each album sale will benefit Prevention Point Philadelphia, a harm reduction organization providing health and social services to the community.