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There’s something a little eerie about the way the band Witch Post came together. A few years back, Scottish singer-songwriter Dylan Fraser found himself traveling regularly from Edinburgh to London, and would use the five-hour train journey to listen to new music; after stumbling upon Alaska Reid’s 2020 EP Big Bunny, and then covering one of the American musician’s tracks on his Instagram stories, they set a date for a writing session while Reid was visiting London from her hometown of Los Angeles.
The night before they were due to hit the studio, they bumped into each other at a Charli XCX gig. Then, after getting to chatting, they realized they both grew up in towns of the same name: Reid in the rural city of Livingston, Montana; Fraser in the town of Livingston, just west of Edinburgh. And then, after they started making music together and were struggling to think of a name, Reid visited a folk museum in northern England and discovered a “witch post”—a 17th-century superstition that involves carving crosses onto your fireplace to prevent witches from coming down the chimney and wreaking havoc in your home. Reid kissed it and sent a picture to Fraser, who pointed out that the carving was actually the St. Andrew’s saltire: the heraldic symbol found on the Scottish flag.
“There have been quite a few witchy, weird little happenings along the way,” says Fraser over Zoom from his home in London. Reid, who joins the call from Los Angeles, adds: “It’s felt a little weird at times, but it’s always felt easy.”
Their music as Witch Post is the product of this rare and somewhat mysterious creative alchemy—which you can chalk up partly to their shared obsession with folklore and storytelling, but also to the way their voices intertwine and even, at moments, begin to blur. You can hear all of that on their new EP, Butterfly, announced today and releasing on March 20 via Partisan Records.
The first single, “Worry Angel”—also out today—begins with a metallic guitar strum that could be straight off a ’90s alt-rock anthem, accompanied by Fraser’s urgent, anxious croon: “I’ve done everything right, so why is everything wrong?” Reid’s airy, richly textured vocals float in on the chorus: “Why do you worry, angel?” As the song unfolds, their voices begin to braid together like twin strands of ivy—a Scottish lilt and a Montana twang—creeping across a hard stone wall of fuzzy grunge guitars. It’s gorgeous to listen to, a little cryptic, and so catchy. (All are running themes in Witch Post’s body of work, which, since the duo joined forces in 2024, has included a handful of singles and an EP, Beast, released last April.)
Their confidence as a duo lies partly in the fact that both had successful solo careers before joining forces. Reid, who grew up between Montana and Los Angeles, has been performing since she was 14 and releasing music for well over a decade—first in bands, playing at clubs in Downtown L.A.; and then, since 2017, as a solo artist, building a loyal following around her distinctive blend of grunge and dream pop. All helped by supporting slots for musicians like Porches and Maya Hawke. (Reid’s guitar-driven debut EP, 2020’s Bad Bunny, was followed by her excellent, folk-inflected debut album, Disenchanter, which paired cinematic coming-of-age tales with occasional shimmering electronic touches, the latter courtesy of her partner, PC Music founder and Charli XCX collaborator A.G. Cook.)
Fraser, meanwhile, developed his own following as a teenager when writing evocative, atmospheric songs about life growing up in small-town Scotland, set against a sonic landscape of rock guitars and brooding industrial beat. He signed to a major label in 2019. Yet both Reid and Fraser note that, ironically, it’s been “easier to get people interested in Witch Post than it was in our solo projects”—which has, in turn, made them more ambitious about what Witch Post could be. “I felt like I was having to really do a lot of promo to get anyone to listen to my solo stuff,” says Fraser. “Witch Post just had this thing where people were like, ‘Oh, a boy and girl in band, we must listen to that.’”
“Sometimes I feel like the old crone with the apple in Snow White,” adds Reid with a chuckle, before putting on a rasping witch’s voice: “Come on… just listen to our solo project!”
Both of them say that it was each other’s voices that they fell in love with first. “When I heard Dylan’s voice, it was the same way I feel generally about amazing singers. I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is that? Were you born with that? Is it from the stars?’ It’s very magical, and I think that’s really what hooked me.” (Fraser also notes that he’s always loved a male-female musician duo, citing Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins’ unreleased duet “All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun” as an all-time favorite.)
But what they truly bonded over was a belief in putting old-fashioned narrative songwriting at the fore—inspired in part by the mythologies of their native homelands—and then lending it a forceful emotional charge. “I would say that Alaska and I generally tend to connect with music where you can feel that person in it,” Fraser explains. “We do definitely have different reference points from what music we grew up with and what we listen to—and even in the way that we write, there are differences. But I think that’s what makes it really special.”
If it all sounds rather harmonious—and perhaps a little too good to be true—they quickly point out that they do still butt heads regularly. “It’s just typical band stuff, really,” says Fraser, with a knowing grin. “I’ll be like, ‘I want to do this thing,’ and Alaska’s like, ‘No, I want to do this thing.’ It’s almost like being brother and sister and bickering. It’s never serious, and we always get to a place that we’re both really happy with—it’s like stupid arguments you have with your siblings.” Adds Reid: “It’s really granular, boring stuff. I’m almost kind of lazy in the way that I compromise, because I’m just like, ‘Fuck it.’ And then I usually end up loving it.”
On Butterfly, you can hear the fruitful outcome of that push and pull: On the EP’s opener, “Changeling,” they weave a ghostly yarn about a changeling named Julie with “painted tears on her face,” over explosive, Pixies-esque power chords. (“Then she tried to consume me / And we were never the same,” they sing on the chorus, wickedly twisting.) The record also reflects the more self-assured place they’ve reached as a duo, notably on the strut and swagger of the dizzying looped guitar lick on upbeat banger “Tilt-A-Whirl,” and the jangling, distorted riffs of “Country Sour.”
“We’re not afraid of rock drama!” Reid laughs. “I feel like both of us would rather be over the top than be something that could be easily played in the background of a Taco Bell or whatever.”
Even if Butterfly sounds impressively accomplished, it’s actually the product of a period Fraser describes as “scrappy and chaotic”—after Beast was released to critical acclaim, record labels began circling, and they put together most of the EP during an intensive period of writing and recording to build a more robust body of work. (All of their music, so far, has also been entirely self-produced.) They eventually ended up signing with Partisan Records, the New York-based indie outfit that is home to an eclectic roster of artists including Geese, PJ Harvey, and Fela Kuti—still, they’re determined to retain that DIY spirit. “It’s definitely going to be nice that we’re not having to fund it entirely ourselves, and we can be a bit more ambitious,” says Fraser. “But I mean, we’ve always been ambitious. It’s just that now we can root ourselves a bit more, and there’s more of a structure in place—which probably allows us to get even more weird with stuff.”
Indeed, the pair is already hard at work on their first full-length album. “I think that’s been really fun with Butterfly—that we’re kind of paving the way for the new record,” explains Reid. But they’re also thinking even longer-term. Very long-term, in fact: One of their favorite shared jokes typically rears its head when they’re in the pub together, and a band of a more mature vintage is performing on stage. “I’ll be like, ‘That’s literally going to be us in 50 years,’” Fraser laughs.
For Reid, the camaraderie of it marks a welcome shift after the challenges of her career as a solo artist. “The biggest fear that you are presented with as a girl in music is, ‘Will anyone want to listen to me when I’m older? Are they even going to want to look at me?’ It’s this fear that is, I think, baked into our culture,” she says. “But with Dylan, I know that you and I are going to be in that band. I’m going to have crazy wrinkles, gray hair, and you’re going to still want to make music with me.”
After a pause, Reid continues: “I’ve wrestled with a lot of that stuff that’s just baked into the music industry—just bullshit, honestly. And it’s been so nice to be in this band because I can comfortably occupy my space and not apologize for it.” Like everything else about Witch Post, it feels like it was always meant to be.
