survive

“Manipulation” is a mantra disguised as a warning. Minimal and disorienting, the track loops like a thought you can’t shake, the kind that corrodes slowly. drrtgrrl chants the word like it’s both a curse and a craving, letting repetition do the unraveling.

There’s something cracked beneath the simplicity. The way the phrase “you don’t know” hangs there, unfulfilled, feels more like an accusation than a lament. This is the shortest track on the record, but it lingers.

Manipulation
Manipulation
Manipulation

Live on high and high
Is so concerning to me now

You don't know
You don't know
You don't know

Manipulation

nhoJ 44:8 (Bonus)

I want a little piece of you in me.
 I think it's the cure for my envy.
 I guess, to put it simply, sinning.
 I feel closer to God
 when you put it in me.
So Daddy
 make me come,
 make me hurt,
 make me scream.
Show me something:
 pain and pleasures, Anthropocene.
 Push me to my limits
 I’m not afraid to die.
How is this a sin?
 It’s the first time I’ve felt alive.

Heaven has forsaken the masturbator,
 so I think you and me
 should get acquitted together.
Don’t quit it, hit it.
 Exonerated.
 Love is so overrated.
Discharge my soul.
 Bleach my thoughts.
 Whitewash me whole.
 Liberate me from on top.

Put me down like a rabid dog.
 I’ll assume the position.
 This is what I wanted all along.
 I’ll obey your every word.
 I will listen.

I want a little peace of you in me.
 I think it’s the cure for my anxiety.
 The way you fuck me
 feels like forever.
This is that love
 of that holy endeavor.
 When you fuck me like this
 when you fill this emptiness
 for a while,
 I feel worth it.
 Worthwhile.
 Damn near perfect.

Ecstasis

It took something from me
Heavy is the heart
Violence turned to grief
Deathless, it never starts

I drag its dead weight forward
Quotidiously
Carried in my skin
Scripture carved deep enough that I call it Hymn

I hate how much I ache for
You
I tried to stay up, to make it up
But now that's over, too

I tried
Didn't I
To be who you
Need
I gave all I had helplessly

Flick

“Caterwaul” opens the second half of the album with a slow, aching unraveling. The track sits in the space between prayer and punishment, where devotion is indistinguishable from destruction. drrtgrrl’s voice echoes like a wound retelling itself, asking to be marked, remembered, and rewritten.

Lines like “carve your scripture in my skin” turn the body into a sacred text, one that was never meant to be read aloud. This interlude doesn’t soothe. It scorches. It sets the emotional ground for what’s still to come.

(The Hushhhhh the hu hu hu huuusssshhh)

Sinew by sinew, I am pulled back
 veins like threads,
 thread like lace.
 Bone by bone, snapping into place.
 From nothing, I
 now have a face.

The hush in my hunger,
 the split in my seams,
 Caterwaul clawing onward,
 manipulating destiny.

Desolute.
 Desecration.
 Inverted.
 Vivisection.
 Visceral.
 Unreal.
 A vagabond of the ethereal.

My soul is not secondary
 seceded from reality,
 pleading for God to free me,
 relieve me of my suffering.
Death is not a reverie.
 So this time,
 I’ll find relief.

CATERWAUL | interlude i

“Kenosis” is a haunted liturgy, a plea whispered from the edge of spiritual collapse. Named for the concept of self-emptying, the track moves through prayer, dread, and divine silence. Over sparse, meditative production, drrtgrrl delivers verses that blur the line between devotion and delusion.

Lines like “The grip of non-existence has choked me, molded me, called me back like a worried mother” reveal the song’s aching core. This isn’t a crisis of faith. It’s what remains after faith burns out.
lyrics
Before I could speak,
I knew what it felt like
breathing between spiritual genesis and psychosis.
Sycophants and revelations.

The grip of non-existence has choked me,
molded me,
called me back like a worried mother,
fed me silence like a scorned lover.

I feel scared unlike ever before,
so I try to let go
because I don't care
when really
I'd kill myself to get out of here.

The veil is thinnest after the storm.
I'm not meant to exist just to feel torn.
So I feel nothing.
Thank God for it.

I've been praying to God,
but my knees are raw,
and the scabs won't heal.

Am I good enough to be granted your love?
Guess we won't know until

Kenosis

“Ego Death by Design” seduces with a slow build and a trembling edge. It’s a song about compulsion, hunger, and the performance of consent inside a collapsing relationship. drrtgrrl’s vocals weave between softness and surrender, asking to be used while quietly warning of the fallout.

Lyrics like “cultivated apathy” and “lick your lips like I’ll put up a fight” frame intimacy as a battlefield dressed in silk. This track doesn’t plead for connection. It stages its own unraveling, all while whispering, no one has to know.

Laying down for the night
In your chest, I'm paranoid
I could do that for you
I could be what you use

But we won't last a day
So stay in our reverie
I feel like being unsafe
Do it till I'm screaming for you, you

My knees go weak
I adore you
Because baby, no one has to know
No one has to know

I'll bury the seeds deep
And suffocate them endlessly

Baby, we can touch
Baby, we can tease
Baby, I consume
Cultivated apathy

Engorged pedagogue
Gorging yourself like you'll never get enough
Gorgeous and erudite
Lick your lips like I'll put up a fight

Laying down for the night
In your chest, I'm paranoid
I could do that for you
I could be what you use

But we won't last a day
So stay in our reverie
I feel like being unsafe
Do it till I'm screaming for you

My knees go weak
I adore you

Ego Death by Design

“Shades of Gold” closes the album in soft devastation. It is the memory of something beautiful that has already slipped through your fingers, held together by nostalgia, longing, and a refusal to let go. The verses drift like sunlight through blinds; warm, aching, and unresolved.

drrtgrrl’s voice carries the weight of love unspoken and loss that lingers. The final chorus opens into a cathartic key change that is less about triumph and more about surrender. “Now it doesn’t matter” does not mean the pain is gone. It means it has been accepted.

This is how the record ends. Not in healing, but in bittersweet survival.

Wherever I go
I hope you will follow
However this ends
I hope we can do it again

Thinking of the times
Like honeybees and dandelions
I'll try
To remember you in
Shades of gold

When I talk to your mom
I'll put a brave face on
Wearing phantom pains
Like southern cotton

I tried to love
Tried to rise above
Held it in my palm
That didn’t last long

My favorite song
Before you leave
Say goodbye
Otherwise, I’ll be
Waiting up all night

I’ll see you after
When everything’s
Alright

(Key change)
But now it doesn't maaaaaaaattteeeeeerrrr
Now it doesn’t matter
Now it doesn’t maaatteee..eeee..eeerrrr
Now it doesn’t matter (x3)

Shades of Gold

Bare, late, late at night
Before the grace of God go I

Retreat thusly
Thimbleberry

Cut and cover the rust
And what's left was made for us

A thin lip between 
hearsay and heresy
Stirred ships go gently 
into that sweet good night

There I, good-bye, alive, all right

(break)

Bellowing and blowing...

Measured virtue dependent on 
proximity

Organs fill the interlude
Merciful nothing

Mother, gentle beast
Servile and doting

The conifers of the family tree
Care not for her
Quite contradictory

Caressed and seek
The soft underbelly
Bellowing and blowing

In peace and out pity
The pit seated deep within me

Anatomy of Negation | interlude ii

"Ego Death by Design” seduces with a slow build and a trembling edge. It’s a song about compulsion, hunger, and the performance of consent inside a collapsing relationship. drrtgrrl’s vocals weave between softness and surrender, asking to be used while quietly warning of the fallout.

Lyrics like “cultivated apathy” and “lick your lips like I’ll put up a fight” frame intimacy as a battlefield dressed in silk. This track doesn’t plead for connection. It stages its own unraveling, all while whispering, no one has to know.
lyrics
Laying down for the night
In your chest, I'm paranoid
I could do that for you
I could be what you use

But we won't last a day
So stay in our reverie
I feel like being unsafe
Do it till I'm screaming for you, you

My knees go weak
I adore you
Because baby, no one has to know
No one has to know

I'll bury the seeds deep
And suffocate them endlessly

Baby, we can touch
Baby, we can tease
Baby, I consume
Cultivated apathy

Engorged pedagogue
Gorging yourself like you'll never get enough
Gorgeous and erudite
Lick your lips like I'll put up a fight

Laying down for the night
In your chest, I'm paranoid
I could do that for you
I could be what you use

But we won't last a day
So stay in our reverie
I feel like being unsafe
Do it till I'm screaming for you

My knees go weak
I adore you

Ego Death By Design

DUSK

Paying the High Cost of Living - Rehearsal Recording 2025

Skinned Men Kill Again - Rehearsal Recording 2025

Huttamatutty (That Other side B) (single)

That Other (Single)

PRODUCED BY: JOJANK, NOJAY, BRYTE, VAYDA AND CHRIS LEON

GIRL INCARNATE

I BITE (Remastered)

LAMENT

That Clare brings roaring post-punk synthwave queercore to protest. A talented trans singer songwriter who performs her own poetic songs with deep meaning.
Middlesbrough, Teesside, UK
#synthwave #punk #postpunk #darkwave #alternative #trans

Music made from the edge of a digital breakdown.
From San Francisco, California
https://linktr.ee/kmob23

drrtgrrl is the dark, gritty sound of Brooke Lever, a queer artist blending industrial beats, haunting melodies, and raw lyricism. Rooted in Memphis's underground, drrtgrrl explores themes of pain, pleasure, and transformation. Inspired by 90s performance art and the concept of decay, drrtgrrl crafts intense, immersive soundscapes that push boundaries and invite liberation.

New tracks tagged #queercore