Oscar-and-Emmy-nominated actress Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring, The Departed) is a bigtime heavy-music fan, having proved as much over the years while soaring through her share of Slipknot, Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath covers. She’s now currently fronting her own band, the Yagas, who have unveiled a thematically heavy new track about human trafficking.
The band’s “She’s Walking Down” is their second single, and follows last fall’s “The Crying Room.” Aesthetically, the new tune locks into dark and twitchy beats, Eighties-metal-scouring guitar chunking and squelching electronics.
Through that, Farmiga raises her voice for an impassioned, scream-heavy tale about someone being held against their will as someone else’s “pleasure tool” (“Can’t find my way back home/Dowry paid, I bite my tongue”), though whom ultimately gets revenge on their abuser. The band describe the song as “a brutal but exhilarating tale of violence and vengeance.”
“I’d been reading a lot about child trafficking, which eventually entered my dreamscape,” Farmiga explained in a statement of the song’s origins. “As a way to work out my fear, I decided to write a song where the protagonist from those nightmares turns the tables on her abuser and finally puts an end to everything.”
Farmiga directed the video for the song, which merges performance footage of the Yagas with a fictionalized escape scene. You can check it out for yourself up above.
Farmiga is joined in the Yagas by Deadsy keyboardist Renn Hawkey, drummer Jason Bowman, guitarist Mark Visconti and bassist Mike Davis. The band make their live debut March 8th at Kingston, New York’s Assembly venue.