Cassette version on her last album, as released via Bandcamp.

Erica Dawn Lyle is a writer, curator, experimental musician, and cultural instigator who lives in New York and Los Angeles. She was a touring guitar player for Bikini Kill, but I find her amazing as a solo performer!

The album began with Lyle’s inside joke challenge to herself: could she remake the 1978 Van Halen classic live opener as a trans girl anthem?

“We’re hot, we’re all up in their head, and they want to, like, burn us at the stake!”

She soon found, however, that playing the song live seemed to open a darker kind of portal, an uncanny entryway through which the bleeding future would eerily arrive. On the day she’d intended to begin playing the song, she woke up to find the sky black with smoke from wildfires in Canada. The morning after she had stayed up until dawn, singing the song again and again to arrive at a final arrangement for the record, Lyle woke up and learned that Aaron Bushnell had self-immolated that morning on the steps of the US Capitol. A month or so after she record the song in LA, the studio burned down.

In these two tracks, Lyle tunes her antenna deeply to The Moment, channeling abandon and grief in equal measure, anticipating the horrors and resistance of 2025. ON FIRE is dedicated “to all the Angelenos who self-organized so beautifully to take care of each other after the fires, to the red hot trans girls who are taking the lead in efforts of mutual aid and resistance everywhere, and to Los Angeles, the USA’s anti-fascist city.”

Tracks

1. On Fire II 12:12

2. On Fire III 12:49

Released October 1, 2025

Guitar/drums/vocals by Erica Dawn Lyle
Lyrics by David Lee Roth

Percussion by Laura Forman

Guitars improvised and record live VCR Studios by Vice Cooler in Los Angeles, CA, March 2024.