Bay Area trio Rainbow Girls are currently on tour with revered singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco with upcoming California shows in Solana Beach and Los Angeles. In celebration of the appearances, they have released a new single, "Compassion to the Nth Degree," and an accompanying music video today. The track is off a forthcoming full-length album of which few additional details have been revealed. Of the song, the group shares, "If you don’t like protest songs, you’ll love this. In a last-ditch effort to wrench up compassion for those we don’t see eye-to-eye with, we turn to love. This song names a kind of love previously undefined: love for the bigot, love for the thief, love for the destroyer. Infinite compassion. Only light can illuminate the darkness, so this is a sweet little love song for all the sh**heads out there."
WATCH: "Compassion to the Nth Degree" Official Music Video
Of making the music video, they add, "We made this video in our living room. We moved all our furniture outside, spent days taping aluminum foil to big pieces of plywood and hanging tinsel curtains. We bought gaudy cakes and donuts and covered them in glitter. We commissioned a custom eggplant emoji piñata from a woman in Oregon because we wanted a metaphor so blatant that even Party City couldn’t help us. We hired our dear friend Sam Chase to take a risk, take a test, and make this video with us (he also has a cameo in the video as our Donut Sommelier). We wanted to create a liminal zone lacking substance. A sugar-coated wonderland reflecting the vapid distractions and bulging vanity we were seeing all over social media, despite the very alarming reality of the world falling apart in every conceivable way. The thing is, we set out to make something airbrushed and fluffy and stupid in order to ridicule an internet culture that can be all of those things, and in doing so had the most fun ever filming a video. We got to makeout with glitter lollipops and roll around in cotton candy clouds- what’s not to love?????"
The upcoming album follows Rainbow Girls' Rolling Dumpster Fire EP, which saw standout single "Free Wine" land the #1 spot on Ann Powers' "Top 15 Songs of 2021" for NPR Music. Under the Radar calls the 5-song set, "An expansive reverie," noting, "The band’s contemplative folk instrumentation, stirring string section, and trademark harmonies all enlace together into an ethereal dreamscape, one filled with gentle beauty and mysterious allure," and Flood Magazine adds, "Rainbow Girls have summed up the mysterious and unnerving phases of pandemic life—getting lost in dreams, escaping in bouts of pleasure, and clinging to company when it’s available." Rolling Dumpster Fire has garnered favorable comparisons to work by Phoebe Bridgers and John Craigie (The Boot) and "the intimate folk of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings" (Glide Magazine) with the San Francisco Chronicle deeming it one of the best new local releases and praising, "The gorgeous folk alchemy of Erin Chapin, Caitlin Gowdey and Vanessa [May] is on full display."
Rainbow Girls On Tour:
June 21 — Belly Up Tavern — Solana Beach, CA*
June 23 — The Ford— Los Angeles, CA*
June 24 — Kate Wolf Music Festival — Laytonville, CA
July 16 — Lincoln Center — New York City, NY
July 21 — Northwest String Summit — North Plains, OR
July 27 — Ogden Nature Preserve — Ogden, UT
July 28 — Sawtooth Music Festival — Stanley, ID
July 30 — Canmore Folk Music Festival — Canmore, AB
August 6 — Petaluma Music Fest — Petaluma, CA
August 18 — Topaz Farm — Portland, OR^
September 9 — Music on the Square — Jonesborough, TN
September 13 — Americanafest — Nashville, TN
September 24 — Redding Roots Revival Festival — Redding, CA
September 30 — Sisters Folk Festival — Sisters, OR
*appearing with Ani DiFranco
^appearing with Fruition