Hear Amandla Stenberg’s Song From New Movie Written By Boy Harsher’s Jae Matthews

Amandla Stenberg, known for her roles in films like Everything, Everything and The Hate U Give, is not the first movie star to release music on Sacred Bones Records, but it’s always a trip when that happens. Stenberg, a former child actor, was Rue in The Hunger Games. Now, she’s labelmates with Maria BC and Sextile.

Amandla Stenberg has dabbled in music before — covering Mac DeMarco, releasing a song inspired by her movie Bodies Bodies Bodies. Stenberg’s latest movie is My Animal, an atmospheric supernatural romance. Director Jacqueline Castel, who’s making her feature debut, has directed a lot of videos for Sacred Bones artists, and the screenplay was written by Jae Matthews, the singer for the electronic duo Boy Harsher. They’re on Sacred Bones, too.

The My Animal soundtrack includes Amdandla Stenberg’s song “Wicked Animal.” It’s a moody, gothed-out synthpop track, and Stenberg wrote and co-produced it while filming the movie. Here’s what Stenberg says about it:

I wrote this track from the bathroom of a hotel in a tiny town situated between mountains of snow in northern Ontario during the filming of our movie My Animal. Sometimes my costar Bobbi and I wandered up and down the icy block that made up downtown, but most of the time we found solace from the cold in our room together, singing on handheld karaoke mics. This song came from that place of deep isolation and playfulness. It was inspired by the themes of the movie and the alchemy of the set our director Jacqueline Castel created. Bobbi is a werewolf struggling with the decision to give into their dark, feral, powerful nature. It had me thinking about what parts of ourselves we meet when we placate our most taboo desires. There is a danger to hedonism, but a power as well.

Bobbi wrote a poem about our characters that they spoke aloud for the bridge. My dear friend Juice Jackal came on for some additional production once we all came home from our fantastic frozen fever dream. It was recorded on my iPhone mic, which I actually really love the sound of. I love writing music when I’m on set — the spirit of the film always takes on a lifeblood of its own and injects itself into everything you touch.

Below, listen to “Wicked Animal” and check out the My Animal trailer.

My Animal is on VOD now, and “Wicked Animal” is out on Sacred Bones.