After an eight year hiatus to pursue separate music careers, the newly reunited sister duo Meg & Dia have released a video for “American Spirit,” from their new album happysad.
The video, which was exclusively premiered by Forbes, is an eight minute epic mini-story that calls upon stories of dystopian futures in the vein of Netflix’s original series “Black Mirror,” which recently re-wrote the classic Nine Inch Nail song “Head Like Hole,” for Ashley O – A fictional pop-star portrayed by Miley Cyrus.
The video opens with a black screen and Meg and Dia wondering where the directors are. An assistant answers them, telling the sisters that human directors are a thing of the past and that it is now “just us techs” and that the camera “does the rest.” The sisters discuss how the robot is scaring them, while the tech assistants discuss an error that “happened last week.” The first tech assistant we see tells the second tech assistant to just reboot the system and everything should go back to normal.
The sisters are told by the first assistant to greet the director and find their marks. They are then calibrated by a camera attached to the robot arm. They ask if it is safe, and of course the answer is yes, but of course, they aren’t. The first few minutes of the music video within a music video go off without a hitch, but soon it goes full Terminator.
The futuristic video was directed by Saman Kesh, who has worked with Ed Sheeran and Calvin Harris, after the sisters reached out to him via Instagram’s direct messaging feature. Dia said that she was not expecting a response, but, obviously, Kesh responded and they talked over dinner. The dinner lead them to realize that Kesh, along with his co-director Justin Hopkins, were the perfect team for the “American Spirit” music video.
Dia said in the Forbes exclusive that the video was personal to the sister’s story of deciding to do music together again “We got to explore our fun, quirky sides with this video, and dive deeper into our relationship as sisters.. It shows us coming together at the end, which is exactly how I feel in real life. I always feel stronger and more clear-headed with my sister around — like I can take on anything, whether it’s my own inner critic, a breakup, or yes, a giant, crazy, killer robot.”
Stream, or purchase, happysad here and watch the wildly futuristic video for “American Spirit” below.
Photo Credit: Raymond Flotat
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