We’ve always loved a witch-hunt. Give a crowd a villain, a convincing story, and just enough outrage, and suddenly nobody remembers to ask whether the story was true. “Burn The Witch” by herbie the rabbit takes that familiar human impulse and turns it into a darkly playful, quietly furious song about complicity, accusation, and the danger of believing before investigating.
There’s something almost disarming about the way the song approaches its subject. Herbie the Rabbit leans into a sardonic, conversational quality, pairing an infectious alternative-rock edge with lyrics that gradually reveal something much more unsettling. It’s catchy enough to draw you in, but there’s a pointedness underneath the shrug.
At the centre of it all is the question of responsibility. “Someone came along and told you a version of a story that wasn’t true / are you to blame for not finding out, are you to blame for not having a clue?” The line turns the accusation back toward the listener. If we believe a story without questioning it, where does innocence end and complicity begin? The song isn’t simply defending the accused; it’s examining the crowd that was so willing to condemn them.
That idea becomes even more interesting through the song’s connection to Lilith, often described as the first witch. In herbie the rabbit’s interpretation, Lilith represents more than a supernatural figure. She becomes a symbol of forbidden knowledge, independence, and an unwillingness to accept the role imposed upon her. Her defiance, and the punishment attached to it, become a fitting foundation for a song about the way unconventional people can so easily be transformed into villains.
The visual language follows suit, with the cover drawing from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Lady Lilith. It gives the song a distinctly mythological dimension, connecting its contemporary concerns about accusation and misinformation to a much older cultural fascination with the woman who refuses to behave.
Yet “Burn The Witch” never gets bogged down in its own mythology. That may be one of its most appealing qualities. There’s a sense of dark humour running through it, allowing the track to tackle uncomfortable ideas without becoming overly heavy-handed. The result feels more like a story unfolding than a manifesto being delivered.
That storytelling quality is central to the wider herbie the rabbit project, which turns experiences of dissociation, hypervigilance, and complicated perceptions of blame into folk-tale, character, and narrative. Rather than simply documenting an internal world, the project seems interested in mythologising it, finding characters and stories for experiences that can otherwise be difficult to articulate.
Produced by Jordan Lawlor of M83, the production complements that perspective with an appropriately unsettled atmosphere. There’s a quiet menace beneath the song rather than an overwhelming darkness, giving the lyrics space to do their work. The contrast is effective: the music pulls you in while the narrative makes you reconsider what you’re actually singing along to.
As the first release of this new solo chapter, “Burn The Witch” by Herbie the Rabbit makes for an intriguing introduction. It’s a song about witches, certainly, but more importantly, it’s about the people who decide who gets to become one; and maybe that’s the real sting of it: sometimes the most dangerous thing about a witch-hunt isn’t the witch.
It’s the crowd!
