Photo Credit: Colin Hancock

Grammy-nominated artist K. Flay released a new single today titled “Blood Cells.” The new track comes alongside a music video, created from footage submitted by 23 people who attended K. Flay’s sold-out London show in The Barfly. The video can be found on K. Flay’s YouTube channel.

K. Flay stated she wanted the audience to film what they saw, as they saw it. “Twenty-three cameras,” the release writes. “Twenty-three artists. One night. One song. You were there. Now you’re in it forever.” The candid nature of the video comes to suit the song’s own themes of identity and self, as “Blood Cells” explores the relief and friction of K. Flay discovering her own queerness. “In some ways, my sexuality feels entirely incidental to who I am,” K. Flay shares, “and in other ways, it feels utterly essential. Blood Cells is about the experience of discovering my queerness and being with a woman for the first time. There was so much joy and relief, but also real pain, friction. A rush of life pouring in from every direction. The song is about huge personal change, revelation. What it feels like to become yourself.” The song features very explicit lyrics outwardly describing the queer experience, such as mentioning “Twenty years in the closet,” mixing the suffer and struggle that comes with years of denial and ultimate acceptance with the satisfaction and joy of becoming one’s true self into one catchy rock track.

 Talking about the video’s production, editor Dylan Coughran stated “You’re an artist. I’m an artist. Sometimes we make our own weird little things alone in rooms, and sometimes we throw them at each other and somehow they become a bigger, stranger, better thing. Artists supporting artists. People showing up for people. A community making stuff because making stuff together is fucking great.”