Bat For Lashes

Natasha Khan directs Bat for Lashes toward meditations on existence, mortality, and romance, employing mythic narratives matched by sonically daring constructions. Mystical indie-rock defined her Mercury Prize-nominated debut Fur and Gold from 2006, prompting parallels to Kate Bush and Björk, yet the singer/songwriter and multimedia artist asserted her stature as a singular visionary through the expansive cosmic art-pop of Two Suns in 2009, a sweeping platform for her conceptual range and her haunting, forceful voice. A more measured stance shaped the straightforward The Haunted Man in 2012, though that record carried equal measures of sensuality and cinematic tension found in The Bride of 2016 and Lost Girls of 2019. With 2024’s The Dream of Delphi, Khan aligned some of her most daring sonic experiments with subjects—motherhood, creation, femininity—that carried personal resonance.

Born into the Khan family of squash players that included her father Rahmat and her grandfather Nasrullah, the half-Pakistani, half-English singer/songwriter relocated to Hertfordshire, England at age five and taught herself piano at eleven. She originated the Bat for Lashes concept during a journey to San Francisco, drawing from Steve Reich and Susan Hiller plus the multimedia installations she mastered while studying art at the University of Brighton. She sustained her musical work while pursuing studies in childcare and teaching at a nursery school, ultimately issuing Bat for Lashes’ debut single “The Wizard” in early 2006 on her own She Bear Records label. The widely praised first album Fur and Gold followed that September, entering the Top 50 of the U.K. Album Charts and later securing Gold certification in the U.K. Shortlisted for the 2007 Mercury Prize, the project earned Khan that year’s ASCAP Vanguard Award. In 2008 she received Brit Award nominations for British Breakthrough Act and British Female Solo Artist, joined Radiohead on tour, and supplied a cover of “A Forest” to the Cure tribute album Perfect as Cats.

During songwriting for her second album Khan journeyed to the Joshua Tree and settled briefly in Brooklyn, absorbing influence from local acts such as Gang Gang Dance and TV on the Radio. Two Suns, an ambitious concept album centered on Khan’s hedonistic alter-ego Pearl, emerged in April 2009 with contributions from Yeasayer and Scott Walker. A Top Five success in the U.K. that earned quick Gold status, the record climbed to number two on the Heatseekers Albums Chart in the U.S. Nominated once more for the Mercury Prize, it brought Khan another British Female Solo Artist Brit Award nomination, while lead single “Daniel” captured the Ivor Novello Award for Best Contemporary Song. Later that year a special edition of Two Suns appeared, incorporating a cover of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody.” Bat for Lashes’ Two Suns tour spanned 2009 festival appearances and South American dates supporting Coldplay in early 2010. Khan also released several tracks in 2010, among them the Beck collaboration “Let’s Get Lost” for the Twilight Saga: Eclipse soundtrack and the double A-side single “Howl”/“Wild Is the Wind” for Record Store Day.

Creatively depleted after the Two Suns tour, Khan countered writer’s block through dance lessons and life-drawing classes, ultimately composing material inspired by the 1970 film Ryan’s Daughter and the unfiltered candor of Patti Smith. Crafted alongside longtime producers David Costen and Dan Carey plus Beck, Dave Sitek, James Ford, and Charlotte Hatherley, Bat for Lashes’ introspective and restrained third album The Haunted Man arrived in October 2012. It became Khan’s second Top 10 album in the U.K. and secured another Best British Female Brit Award nomination; in the U.S. it reached number 64 on the Billboard 200. Single “Laura” earned a nomination for Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the Ivor Novello Awards.

Over the following years Khan collaborated extensively with fellow musicians, notably Carey and the band TOY on 2013’s “The Bride,” a cover of a pre-revolution Iranian folk song that Carey issued through his Speedy Wunderground imprint. The endeavor grew into Sexwitch, whose self-titled 2015 album collected psych-folk covers originating from Morocco, Thailand, Iran, and the United States. Khan additionally featured on Damon Albarn’s solo album Everyday Robots and rejoined Beck for the soundtrack to Under the Indigo Moon, a short film tied to the launch of her sportswear line for fashion house YMC.

For Bat for Lashes’ fourth album The Bride, a brooding yet ultimately uplifting narrative about a woman whose fiancé dies in a crash en route to their wedding, Khan partnered with Carey along with Jacknife Lee, Simone Felice, and Ben Christophers. Lead single “I Do” surfaced in February 2016; Khan also directed a short film of the same name that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival that April, with The Bride itself released in July. It peaked at number nine on the U.K. Albums Chart and reached number 17 on the Top Alternative Albums Chart in the U.S. After relocating from London to Los Angeles, Khan released her fifth album Lost Girls in September 2019. A hazy, synth-heavy homage to 1980s music and film figures such as the Blue Nile, Bananarama, and John Williams, it entered the U.K. Albums Chart at number 13 and the U.S. Independent Albums chart at number 14. That same year Khan collaborated with composer Dominik Scherrer on the score for BBC 1’s supernatural miniseries Requiem, which received the Ivor Novello Award for Best Television Soundtrack.

In 2020 Bat for Lashes issued the live EP The Boys of Summer and a cover of the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun.” Khan also welcomed her first child that year. Becoming a mother amid the COVID-19 global pandemic proved transformative and deeply shaped Bat for Lashes’ subsequent record. Drawing from her rekindled bond with the earth and life’s cycles as well as her closeness to her daughter, Khan examined these themes on May 2024’s The Dream of Delphi. The album’s keyboard-centric songs and instrumental passages centered on the Motherwitch, a figure who likewise appeared in a hand-illustrated tarot deck Khan released in 2023.