Witch House

Witch house works at 80-100 BPM in the low end, with sub-bass-heavy drum programming descended from Houston chopped-and-screwed hip-hop (DJ Screw's slowed-down mixtape method, 1990s) and Atlanta trap. Vocals are pitch-shifted down and stretched until the words come out as ritual chant rather than singing. The sonic furniture — sine drones, processed bells, distant noise — leans toward the soundtrack of a horror film rather than a dance track, and the music asks listeners to stand still rather than move. The genre is also visually recognisable through the heavy use of triangles, crosses, and Unicode symbols (oOoOO, ▲, †) in artist names.

Witch house took shape in the US around 2009-2010 with Salem (Michigan), oOoOO (San Francisco), Balam Acab, White Ring, and Crystal Castles operating in adjacent space. The Sub Pop label signed Crystal Castles for North American distribution, and Salem's debut 'King Night' (2010) was the closest the scene got to a canonical full-length. The aesthetic faded fairly quickly after about 2013, partly absorbed into the broader 'cloud rap' and ambient-pop landscapes.

The chopped-and-screwed processing is the most identifying element — listen to how vowels stretch out so far that the vocal stops sounding human. The drums use trap hi-hat rolls but at half the speed you'd hear in actual rap. Salem's 'King Night' is unusually melodic for the genre; oOoOO's tracks lean further into texture and away from song.

Salem, 'King Night' (the song and the album, 2010). Crystal Castles, 'Untrust Us' (2008) shows the closest mainstream-indie cousin.

The name 'witch house' was reportedly coined as a joke by the artist Travis Egedy (Pictureplane) in 2009 — he has said in interviews he didn't mean it seriously, but the term stuck because the scene needed a shorthand.