Bobby Caughron 
“We went running around the castle trying to get as much footage as we could while we had the time off to do so,” says CrowJane (real name: Heather Galipo) about her new atmospheric and foreboding video “Nomad”
The video was filmed at a European castle where Heather had been working on a film (her day job is working as a cinematic make-up artist whose credits include The Last of Us: Part II, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3, and American Horror Stories among many others). Capturing the dark and somber tone that the song itself embraces, she and the film crew created a video that hearkens the atmospherics of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 classic Nosferatu and Arthur Lubin’s The Phantom of the Opera (1943). “At the end of last year, I was working on a psychological thriller movie in a chateau in Northern France,” she recalls. “The crew and I were listening to my EP Bound To Me and the drone/camera operator Brendan O’Neal and with some other crew, suggested shooting some music video footage at this amazing castle we were all living in. We agreed that the song ‘Nomad’ was the most fitting for the location.”
Taken from her Bound To Me EP that was released in 2023, “Nomad” is powered by a thunderous rhythm section and a lower-octaved keyboard that allows CrowJane’s piercing and ethereal vocals to weave in and out of the rhythmic dirge, capturing the elegiac aura of post-punk artists Xmal Deutschland and March Violets before her. “The song ‘Nomad’ in a nutshell is about war, the ceaseless spilling of blood, and the aftermath,” she explains. “The chorus has a kind of hopeful tune in the mix of grim verses, talking about the rise of a new dawn when the killings are over. I was also thinking about climate change and referring to the planet as a malignant sphere and asking myself, ‘Is the end near?’ If the universe doesn’t kill off humanity, maybe we will just cause our own extinction.”
Coming from a visual art background of surrealism and horror, she has simultaneously built a career as a professional horror effects makeup artist and a recording artist. This unlikely background helped foster an outsider musical sensibility that is perfectly balanced by a comprehensive knowledge of the byways and back roads of punk and death rock, both historic and in LA’s contemporary underground music scene, of which her bands Egrets on Ergot, Prissy Whip and The Deadbeats have been an integral component for the past decade.
Her EP Bound To Me is a five-track deep dive into the mindset of CrowJane, embracing Darkwave, Goth, Tribal, Synthpop and Postpunk, providing a stylistic link to her critically-hailed debut album Mater Delarosa. With its subterranean dance music footsteps, the EP boasts other tracks like “Butterflies,” setting the minor chord stage that CrowJane dances on. The Janes Addiction-rave up of “Ides of March” chimes in guitar textures while her layered vocals recall Perry Farrell’s high-registered howls. The atmospheric closer “Broken Angel” has a cathedral-esque expansiveness that recalls early 4AD.
Coming from the aforementioned visual art background of surrealism and horror, CrowJane has built a career as a professional effects makeup artist who has worked on Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.3, American Horror Stories, Mulan, HBO’s Winning Time, The Orville, FX’s Dave, We Need To Do Something, Cheaper By The Dozen, Dancing With The Stars, The Last Of Us: Part II, Star Wars: Fallen Order, and more alongside her music career. This wide-ranging background in visual arts helped foster an outsider musical sensibility perfectly balanced by an encyclopedic knowledge of the byways and back roads of LA’s contemporary underground music scene in punk and death rock, of which her bands have been immersed in for the past decade.
“Nomad” is taken from CrowJane’s EP Bound To Me, which was released in 2023 via Kitten Robot and produced by Paul Roessler (TSOL, The Screamers, Nina Hagan).
About The Author
Chad T. Gephardt 
