Butcher Babies vocalist Heidi Shepherd directed and edited the band’s “Leaving California” video, released September 15, 2026. Her involvement extends back to the song’s earliest idea: a chorus melody she recorded into her phone while driving away from the place she had expected to call home permanently.
Writing began in July 2020, as Shepherd watched friends, relatives and people in her industry leave California. Her own departure coincided with the end of a relationship, making the move a separation from several parts of her life at once. “I wasn’t only breaking up with California,” she explained in comments published by Lambgoat. She remained grateful for what that life and relationship had given her, but felt she needed a change. Humming the chorus into her voice notes preserved an idea that arrived while she was making that transition, with excitement about a new beginning sitting alongside the difficulty of leaving.
Shepherd developed the song with guitarist Henry Flury, who also worked on the video. Filming took place at Shepherd Grip, Lighting in Orem, Utah, with Flury, Phil Shepherd and Jesse Shepherd handling camera duties. The three shared video production credits with Shepherd. Howard Benson produced the recording, with Flury, Joe Rickard and Neil Sanderson as co-producers.
“Leaving California” is part of a broader return to difficult personal experiences on Nightbloom. In her statement about the album, Shepherd described withdrawing from social media and starting therapy after struggling to see herself as positively as the people supporting her did. Over the following year, she began confronting emotions and memories she had pushed aside. Writing became a way to work through them, including the end of a marriage, rejection connected to her religious upbringing and the loss of close relationships.
“This new album isn’t about the suffering, it’s about the survival,” she said. Shepherd described the songs as a way to turn painful experiences into work she could regard differently. That process informed the album’s title: she associated its creation with growth during a difficult period, when revisiting those experiences began to change how she understood them.
Listeners first heard “Leaving California” on August 28, ahead of the video’s arrival. It joins songs including “Sincerity” and “Black Dove” on the 10 track Nightbloom, scheduled for release October 2, 2026, through Judge & Jury Records.
