Julien Baker has released a new music video for “Hardline,” which will be featured on her upcoming studio album Little Oblivions, out on February 26 via Matador Records. This music video was created using stop-motion animation, which was created by director Joe Baughman.

“Hardline” was created using paper cut outs, and focuses on two anthropomorphic dog characters, who create a destructive device capable of forming a tornado. At the end of the video they unleash their natural disaster, which destroys their entire papier-mâché town. The instrumental of the track perfectly captures this destruction, as its melancholic chords and rhythms blend perfectly with the winter aesthetic, before picking up during the chorus and destruction sequences. Baker’s vocals are also a highlight, as she gives a heartfelt touch to every lyric.

The idea for this type of animation came from papier-mâché sculptures Baker would make out of keycards and plane tickets, which she came across while touring. She eventually built a sculpture of a house and van from these materials, which inspired similar objects in the music video.

“I wanted to incorporate it into the record and when we were brainstorming ideas for videos we came across Joe Baughman and really liked his work so we reached out with the idea of making a stop-motion video that had similar aesthetic qualities as the house I built did,” Baker explained in a press release. “I don’t know why I have the impulse to write songs or make tiny sculptures out of plane tickets. But here it is anyway: a bunch of things I’ve collected and carried with me that I’ve re-organized into a new shape.”

This most recent single follows “Faith Healer” which came out in October. Baker appeared in a couple of live stream events including the virtual Newport Folk Festival and Isol-Aid.

Photo Credit: Kalyn Oyer