Here’s an X-clusive premiere you won’t want to miss! Electro-rock four-piece Tether have released a gripping new music video for recent single Heartless, and it’s a ripper. Lifted from their debut EP Severance (out Friday, February 14), catch them launching it in Perth on Friday, February 21 at Lucy’s Love Shack.
Hazy, cult-like and evocative, Heartless‘ has some Eyes Wide Shut vibes and captures a simmering, dream-like aesthetic that is more mature than we’ve seen from them previously – a promising glimpse at what the future may hold for the emerging WA band. The video offers a deeper examination of Tether’s expanding conceptual universe, implying that perhaps all of their releases so far are intertwined.
Starting with a call out on social media, the group invited friends and fans from across the city to join their body-positive and inclusive vision for a night. Co-directed with new addition, Saxon Wright (Editor for The Southern River Band’s Second Best), Heartless in its simplest form is an exploration of darkness and light, and where the two intersect.
A collection of masked, corpse-like bodies surround vocalist Codie Sundstrom in a smokey, neon-lit den. Each blindly and desperately reach for a touch of her skin, while a group of funeral clad followers led by fellow band members Caitlin Norris, Molly Case and Amy Muir, march twilight streets in order to seek them out.
Lyrically, Heartless is described by Norris as, “a look at false memories and past lives, and the reality of a break up with no closure.” It’s unclear if what we’re visually seeing is reality or something else (the chorus hook you won’t be able to shake goes “I dreamt that I died”), or how Codie ended up separated from the darkness, but as a swarm of bodies attempt to pull her closer into their world, it’s hard not to feel a little suffocated.
“The shooting process was so wholesome and relaxed – even though half the room was naked. Everyone was just feeding into this vision,” says Sundstrom. “It was an incredible energy.”
“It was the first time we’d shot a video with more than just the band and few of our close friends helping us film, and usually that was happening inside our house,” Norris adds. “Stepping out of that and getting to run a real set with a cast and multiple cameras and all this stuff we didn’t think we’d have the means to do yet was inspiring.”
Case adds, “There was a really exciting atmosphere on set. Everyone worked together so well and it just ran so smoothly. I wanted to do it all over again the next day.”
Heartless is out now. Check out the exclusive X-Press premiere of the video clip below. Lifted from their debut EP Severance (out Friday, February 14), catch them launching it on Friday, February 21 at Lucy’s Love Shack.
