Death Valley Girls explain the self-worth behind their new fire song

Photo: Death Valley Girls performing in 2017, by Guido van Nispen. Wikimedia Commons source; CC BY 2.0. The image was resized for this page.

Death Valley Girls have released How Losing Everything in the Fire Taught Me to Love Myself, and singer Bonnie Bloomgarden has explained the experience behind its unusually direct title. In an October 5 announcement from Suicide Squeeze Records, she describes how losing everything in a fire changed her understanding of her own worth. The single precedes the band’s album Welcome to Earth, due October 9, 2026.

What Bloomgarden says the song is about

Bloomgarden says she had spent much of her life trying to change herself to fit an idea of normality, while believing that other people deserved a sense of worth she had yet to earn. After the fire, that effort gave way to learning how to feel safe with herself as she already was. She credits access to therapy with helping her become comfortable with herself, beyond the immediate work of recovering from trauma.

That account gives listeners a specific starting point for the song: the title’s movement from loss toward self-love reflects the experience Bloomgarden describes, rather than a meaning inferred solely from the words of the title. Her statement frames the discovery as something reached while she was frightened and without her possessions.

How the song fits the album

In Jacob Uitti’s original October 5 interview for American Songwriter, Bloomgarden discusses drawing musical ideas from the natural world and singing with other people. She says much of the new record’s group singing is in unison. Those comments offer broader songwriting context without making every track’s subject identical to this single’s.

The artist’s Bandcamp album page lists the single among the tracks with audio available ahead of the October 9 album release. That is a listening route for the song, not a claim that the whole album is already available. LyricalSource does not currently have a matching lyric page; this report explains the artist’s account without reproducing the song’s lyrics.