Premiere: Bebe Huxley Explores Queer Duality in New 'Darkside' Video

Gender is like a psychedelic drug in rising singer Bebe Huxley's new single and surreal video, "Darkside, which unites her masculinity and femininity in a web of throbbing electronica. Armed with an alluring voice evocative of Kate Bush, Huxley explores her queer duality on the track, as the accompanying visual features floating CGI that resembles Georgia O'Keeffe paintings drowning in space.

"For me, the 'Darkside' is a state of questioning--a challenge to rethink my behaviors I've learned from my assigned gender," Huxley told OUT. "Wearing a cockpiece in performance changed my understanding of myself as a woman in a body and initiated my journey into queer self-discovery."

Raised in San Francisco's underground drag clubs, Huxley's early work saw her lip-synching bubblegum pop numbers from Mandy Moore and Britney Spears. But after cutting her hair short, the queer artist began performing in boy drag, with facial hair, wrapped breasts and her cockpiece, named "Frankie." Regardless of the space--queer, straight or mixed--Huxley's dick became integral to her practice and presentation.

"This feeling of butch self-possession that desired no approval of others was highly sensational for me, feeling so opposite of the way my feminine braine was trained to seek validation," Huxley said. "Sometimes I'd be out as a man, sometimes as a high femme sexpot with my bulge clearly protruding my mini-skirt. Sometimes I'd wear it under a pair of trousers as a secret companion for the night."

She said wearing an external phallus helped her integrate masc and femme forces in her brain--fluidity that now remains constant, whether or not she's wearing Frankie. "The 'Darkside' is ownership of my body and mind on my own terms," Huxley said.

Watch the video for "Darkside," below, lifted off Huxley's debut Scorpio EP, due out fall 2017.