You can read a thousand pieces about how 2026 teenagers are being eaten by their phones. Petrichor — four DC kids between 14 and 16 — spent roughly half a year writing a hardcore-leaning protest song instead. It’s out April 24 as “Richest Witches of the West.”
The band — Mae Zellmer (15, lead guitar, vocals), Augusta Smith (16, bass, vocals, lyricist), Camille Metzler (16, rhythm guitar), and Roscoe Smith (14, drums) — put out their self-titled debut EP last summer, which we covered here. Illustrate Magazine called that record “wildly self-assured” and “a scrappy, razor-edged burst of youthful energy wrapped in equal parts cynicism and giddy playfulness.” The new single pushes the angrier and more direct side of what they already had.
“Witches” was written at the height of the ICE occupation in DC. Augusta, the band’s lyricist, was homeschooled through middle school — sixth grade in public school, then back to homeschooling until high school, with public high school now — and spent a lot of that time learning about systems of power and oppression.
“So when Trump came into office…” she says, trailing off. Roscoe, her younger brother, picks it up: “and then ICE came into our neighborhood in DC exactly at the start of the school year.” Augusta again: “right, it was really easy to see what his goals were.”
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Augusta is blunt about what the song is. “The song is about the oppressive systems of capitalism and how the very rich exploit the other classes immorally for their own gain. This story is as old as time but it was inspired by today’s events because this is the timeline I’m living in.”
She’s also put it this way: “‘Witches’ tells a tale of exploitation and oppression of the many for the benefit of a few that is as old as time. But it is also the story of Trump corruption and ICE terror being inflicted on the US today.” The target spans ICE terror, the Epstein files, Trump-era corruption, and the extraction engine behind all of it.
The starting concept was smaller. “The original intention with ‘Witches’ was to make a ‘noise song’ which is basically just a song that’s loud and chaotic,” Mae says. Camille didn’t expect it to go anywhere serious either: “at the beginning I thought this song was just going to be for fun and nothing serious.”
They’d been listening hard to Minor Threat, Government Issue, and a rotation of LA hardcore bands. Roscoe had a specific reference point:
“I was like, we should write a song like that Government Issue song ‘Rock n Roll Bullshit’.” Augusta came up with a riff, but nothing held; the idea sat on the shelf for half a year. Then she brought in a second riff — the one that eventually became the opening of “Witches.”
Roscoe built the drums around a march cadence he’d pulled from Arctic Monkeys’ “Crying Lightning.” “Augusta and I started playing together — just a little jam sesh — and it came together,” he says. The moment he’s proudest of is small and technical: “There’s a moment when I make the change from beating the hell out of the snare on the intro to hitting on 2s and 4s in the first verse.” Augusta singles out the same part. “That was the thing that brought the song to life when we were first writing it.”
They started playing it at shows before it was finished, and the audience response kept pushing the band to keep working. “When we started playing it at shows it started gaining attention and I think that made us want to make it better and record it,” Mae says. “But the more we worked on it, the more we wanted it to be something more intricate and interesting so we decided we wanted to add the breakdown at the end.”
Roscoe has a specific reference for the outro too. “I was specifically like, ‘hey let’s write an outro like Pow by Beastie Boys.’ We’re not not great at putting out raw energy like other bands can. We are better when we lean into the more melodic, groovier side.” It’s an honest self-assessment about what Petrichor actually does well — which, as it turns out, is not quite the “loud and chaotic” they started with.
Augusta’s usual process got inverted on this one. “Normally I write lyrics first, but this time the music came first so I had to fit the lyrics into the song,” she says. “The original lyrics were always about the same thing but I rewrote most of them when we recorded. ‘Distract our minds with drugs and sugared false realities’ is a great line but I had to cut it. Maybe I’ll use it in a future song.”
By the time it was done, everyone heard the finished song differently than they started. Camille lands on a Refused comparison: “‘Witches’ makes me think of ‘New Noise’ by Refused. Making the changes for recording was a little stressful because it had to be done quickly, but I think it came out really good.” Mae points somewhere else: “‘Witches’ reminds me of ‘Sharks’ by The Warning — the alternating pacing and the whispered lines that are kind of the most important lyrics. Overall I think it turned out great.”
The recording happened at Inner Ear Studio in Arlington, VA, with Don Zientara engineering, Steve Bailey producing and mixing, and TJ Lipple on the master. All four members describe themselves as lifelong Washingtonians who grew up with the straightedge, socially-conscious punk that came out of DC and Dischord Records in the 1980s — which makes the studio choice basically self-explanatory.
Petrichor formed after the members went through Girls Rock! DC, which the band calls “a social change and empowerment program disguised as a rock camp.” They’ve outgrown camp origins at this point; the DC music scene has carried them the rest of the way. Their output so far combines energetic playfulness with unorthodox experimentation, and “Richest Witches of the West” sharpens both.
The cover art picks Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring One of His Sons (c. 1820–23, Museo del Prado, Madrid), paired with a design by the band themselves. A father eating his own child as the visual metaphor for extractive capitalism needs no caption.
“Richest Witches of the West” is out April 24, 2026.
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