Synopsis
Set inside a decaying former convent, the video follows several young women confined to an unsettling institution. The band members appear as detached medical staff, observing and interacting with the patients as their behavior grows increasingly strange. One resident, Grace, becomes fixated on a beauty-pageant fantasy, building toward a surreal performance that blurs aspiration, illness, and spectacle. The cold, dreamlike imagery gives way to a final twist that changes the viewer's understanding of what has been happening inside the institution.
Factoids & Trivia
- The video was filmed in an abandoned Brooklyn convent that had reportedly been unused for more than 30 years. Its old classrooms, bedrooms, blackboards, and empty corridors supplied much of the video's atmosphere without requiring elaborate set construction.
- This was the first SKATERS video to feature the full band on screen. They play staff members at the institution rather than appearing as a conventional performance group.
- The concept was developed as an alternative to a proposed love-story treatment. The band also wanted all of its members to receive roughly equal screen time.
- The production took place in December, and the location was exceptionally cold. Reports from the set describe band members using heaters and sleeping bags to stay warm between takes.
- The beauty-pageant character's look was deliberately exaggerated, with teased and heavily styled hair. The finished sequence was noted for its hazy, distressed visual quality and comparisons to the aesthetic associated with 1990s alternative rock.
- The song appeared on SKATERS' debut album, "Manhattan," released in February 2014. The video arrived ahead of the album and helped introduce the band during its early Warner Bros. period.
- The visual concept was informed in part by conversations with a psychologist in the production team's family and by documentaries about mental illness.