Just in time for the darker season of the year, and when some people believe the veil between live and the after world is the thinnest, we love to put on some dark music. This year, our go to is Endearments’ newest single “Empress.” The song will be on the upcoming Father of Wands EP, which will be released on November 5. Like his newest single, the EP title is tarot-themed.

Endearments is the new solo project of Saint Marilyn’s Kevin Marksson. The idea for this EP comes from his own personal life and chronicles the end of his marriage in 2019.

“Naturally the tarot card I associate with ‘Empress’ is The Empress, and specifically the reversed card,” Marksson explains. “This song is about taking back agency and asserting independence in a relationship where one partner is very controlling. I use the repetitiousness of the verses— ‘Take from me / Take endlessly / I know that you can’ —to illustrate that shift. Lyrically my favorite part of the song is the bridge. I wanted to focus on what is lost when the old dynamics of a relationship are broken—and how we might be unrecognizable to someone when we are no longer defined by what they want us to be.”

You can check out the fascinating new synth-pop song below.