Ethel Cain Unveils New Project 'Perverts'

Perverts, the new project from Ethel Cain, is out now. The official video for “Vacillator” will debut tomorrow.

Cain says, “Poke a hole in yourself and see what comes out. Don’t tell anybody what it is but keep a little in a tiny glass jar under your bed. Cover all the windows and walls with dark fabric and slice yourself into a circle, multiple circles in the middle of the room. Make it hot and suffocate yourself. Go into the woods and look at how many lines there are. The entire world is about lines and where they intersect. There is still time to go into the room where there is nothing and stay there forever but know that while you retain freedom of action, so does the world retain freedom of retaliation. You are not immune to consequence. You can do whatever you want if you can handle the return. And if you cannot, then you should hide away so no one sees how hard you cry if you can’t. It’s ok to be weak. You were born like this for a reason.”

Cain’s first body of work since her groundbreaking debut album Preacher’s Daughter, the 90 minutes of music on Perverts explores Cain’s furthest afield inspirations and sonic negative space, mining drone, noise, slowcore, ambient and beyond. Cain wrote, produced and recorded the project between Coraopolis, PA and Tallahassee, FL over the past year. Late last year she shared “Punish” alongside a music video co-directed with Silken Weinberg, watch it here.

Ethel Cain is the creation of Florida-born multidisciplinary artist Hayden Anhedönia. After years spent teaching herself to produce at home in the Florida panhandle and releasing various projects, Cain moved to Indiana and singlehandedly wrote, produced, recorded and mixed her acclaimed 2021 EP Inbred from the basement of the old church where she lived. 

Cain’s debut album Preacher’s Daughter, a multimedia work that took more than four years to assemble, was released in May 2022 to praise from The New York Times, NPR, Vogue, W Magazine, V Magazine and more, with many critics naming the album one of the best of the year. Cain has spent the years since playing sold out shows and packed festival sets around the world; walking in New York and Paris fashion weeks and collaborating with Givenchy, Miu Miu and Calvin Klein; and collaborating and sharing stages with Florence + the Machine, Mitski and more. 

Photo credit: Silken Weinberg