Sex Week

Sex Week wouldn’t exist if not for a mixtape.

A few years back, actor & musician Pearl Amanda Dickson made a playlist called Colorado 2 Omaha for a friend about to drive across the country to NYC. It stuck around after the journey and soundtracked countless nights in her friend’s apartment, so much so that her roommate, songwriter Richard Orofino, would become obsessed with it. And with its creator.

After a visit to New York, the pair immediately clicked and Sex Week was born.

“Most of the artists on there – Liz Phair, Elusin, Walter Egan, Wolf Alice – we connected over,” says Dickson. “Then Richard returned the favor and showed me Judee Sill and Double Virgo.”

If those references don’t make it clear, there’s a sort of omnivorous quality to the music Sex Week loves & creates – from the warmly silly slowcore of their debut single “Toad Mode” to the taut Raveonettes-esque midnight pop of their second offering “Angel Blessings.” The former is dotted with voice memos of their friend’s cat, the latter is adorned with black metal screams and haunted whispers.

“With some of our songs, I want people to giggle and sing along, and with the others I want them to cry and scream,” says Dickson.

But pressed to explain what they’re really chasing, ultimately Sex Week says it’s the intimacy invoked by the great duets & duos of the past: Stevie Nicks and Don Henley, Sonny and Cher, David Lynch and Laura Dern.

That last non-musical pair might feel like a curveball, if not for the cinematic quality of the project. The clip for new single “Angel Blessings” feels like a fever dream pulled straight from Inland Empire. And Dickson & Orofino are proper polymaths who also direct videos for themselves and their Brooklyn friends in Babehoven, Bloomsday & Palehound..

Orofino cites Ryuichi Sakamoto as a major inspiration: “To be a part of an incredible band, have a complex array of musical journeys outside of pop, score film, live experimentally and spiritually,” says Orofino. “That’s the dream.”

Meanwhile, Dickson cites the everyman Johnny Cash as her inspiration. “There’s something so inspiring about him to me. His ability to convey emotions and stories, not to mention making songs his own. He’s one of my idols in his legacy and how his songs resonate and how he gave back. They’re timeless, and so is he.”

The intersection between those two distinctly different figures, a place where carefully constructed compositions still feel humble and lived in, is exactly where Sex Week resides. And from there, the Brooklyn duo will be unveiling their own mixtape to bewitch listeners all over the world.