Collaborative band EL VY has just released two new videos for songs “Sad/Happiness, Missouri” and “It’s a Game” (NSFW) off of their 2015 debut album Return to the Moon. The band is made up of Matt Berninger of The National and Brent Knopf of Menomena and Ramona Falls.
“Sad/Happiness, Missouri” has shots of EL VY performing intermittently between eerie footage of a mysterious scene in a basement. It was filmed by Michael Brown and Ben Krall and edited by Kelly Lyon.
The video for “It’s a Game” (NSFW) features a story about an artist and a timelapse of his process of creating. It was directed by Tom Berninger—Matt Berninger’s brother. He also directed for The Nationals “Mistaken for Strangers” that won several awards said Pitchfork.
EL VY is planning to release a video for every track off of their first album and so far has released a video for these two as well as their songs “Need a Friend” and “No Time to Crank the Sun” –all filmed or edited in mostly black and white.
The name El VY (pronounced as if to rhyme with hell pie and like the plural of Elvis) is a new band- only dating back to 2015 but the co-conspirators of the group have been sharing music with each other for years. Their friendship dates back to their early days in music when they were first starting to make it as a band playing in small clubs along the East Coast. This was nearly a decade ago when Berninger was bringing up the National and Knopf was in Menomena.
The National is currently working on their seventh studio album but has no official release date. It will be their first album since 2013 when they released Trouble Will Find Me. They plan to go on tour this summer with stops in the U.S, New Zealand, Australia, and Europe where they will headline at many festivals. The band also plans to perform many new songs on this tour before they will even be recorded.