Tag: indie pop

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Michael O. Shares a Yearning Yet Catchy Bop

Michael O. is a New York-born, Portland, ME-raised singer/songwriter, who grew up within a fusion of American, Black American and Nigerian culture. His work is honors his upbringing and his roots rand is deeply inspired by both. And through his remarkably accessible music, he hopes to make avenues for the African Diaspora to connect, as well as to inspire all nationalities across the globe to tap into their respective ancestral lineages.

He attended Dartmouth, where he double majored in Global Health and History and joined an a cappella singing group, The Dartmouth Aires. The group participated on NBC’s The Sing-Off, finishing in second place, which helped the rising artist earn a national and international attention, as well as praise from the show’s judges, Ben Folds and Boyz II Men‘s Shawn Stockman.

After The Sing-Off, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he released his debut EP, 2013’s In The Beginning. Within 24 hours of its release, the EP cracked iTunes R&B Charts Top 5. The EP was also Northern New England’s best selling EP.

He appeared in 2015’s Pitch Perfect 2, playing the role of The Singboks’ lead singer, soloing with “Anywhere You Want It.” He was also featured on Pitch Perfect 2‘s American Music Award-winning, commercially successful soundtrack.

Back in 2017, he began diving deeper into West African and African-influenced music , winning a HAPA Best Upcoming Artist Award for that year’s “Your Way.” He followed that up with “Umbrella” “See Stars” and two remixes of “Umbrella — one sung in French and the second remix featuring Kenyan star Naiboi. Adding to a growing international profile, he has collaborated with FlexCop, Option4 and Gladiator.

Michael O.’s latest single “Attention” continues a run of remarkably breezy, accessible an downright catchy pop that meshes elements of Sade-like Quiet Storm R&B and Afrobeats paired with the rising artist’s plaintive, yearning delivery. At its core, the song is a love song for the grown and sexy out there.

“‘Attention’ dives deep into the emotions of a relationship unraveling,” Michael O. explains. The track captures the bittersweet beauty of accepting a relationship that’s ended — even if they didn’t want it to happen. “‘Attention’ is both a personal confession and a universal anthem for anyone navigating love’s complexities. This track is for everyone who’s been there—questioning themselves, searching for closure, and coming to terms with an ending they didn’t want but couldn’t stop.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Norway’s Y is Nature Shares Unsettling Yet Gorgeous “The Fool”

Hjalmar Littauer is an Oslo-based songwriter and producer, whose career started in earnest with the Danish DIY project ISRA. 2018’s Sun Solace EP was his first bit of recorded output with the band. Littauer stepped out into spotlight with his solo, indie psych project Y is Nature.

Inspired by the spy thriller film genre and today’s geopolitical hybrid warfare, Littauer through Y is Nature explores themes of evasion, secrecy and suspicion paired with ambiguous soundscapes that reflects anxiety and courage.

Littauer’s Y is Nature full-length debut, Evasion is slated for release next month. The album’s latest single, the Hjalmar Littauer, Simon Littauer and Martin Solli co-produced “The Fool” features Tuva Svendsen Hesmyr‘s expressive and gorgeous vocal ethereally floating over a lush and dreamy production featuring dense layers of glistening synths, skittering and pulsing beats. The result is a song that’s tense yet languorous, elegant and downright dreamy.

Littauer and Svendsen Hesmyr explain that “the track navigates the unsettling interplay between the fear of losing someone you love and the desperate need for control.”

Directed and filmed by Greg Pope and based on a screenplay written by Littauer and Svendsen Hesmyr, the video stars Svendesn Hesmyr in an unsettling fever dream that follows the Norwegian artist wandering the woods and in a bare, all-white room, appearing as though she were being interrogated.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Uwade Shares Breezy “Call It A Draw”

Uwade is a rising Nigerian-born, North Carolina-raised singer/songwriter and musician, who grew up steeped in hymnal choral music and Nigerian High Life on her dad’s car radio and later studied Classics at Columbia University and Oxford University, which informs her work with an astonishing originality and depth.

Over the past handful of years, the rising Nigerian-born artist has seemingly been everywhere: Her emotive vocal opens Fleet Foxes‘ Grammy-nominated 2020 album Shore. She went on to tour extensively with the band, and went on to open for Jamila Woods, Sylvan Esso, The Strokes and more. So far, her output has included a handful singles including “Do You See the Light Around Me?” and “The Man Who Sees Tomorrow.”

Her highly-anticipated full-length debut, Florilegium is slated for an April 25, 2025 release through Ehiose Records and Thirty Tigers. The album’s title is borrowed from the Latin adjective florilegus, which means “flower-gathering.” The album reportedly is a shimmering collection of songs that finds sweetness and light in sorrow — and is an amalgamation of disparate influences and recording sessions seamlessly fitting together through her expressive voice.

The album came together nicely three studio sessions broken up over a yer and half, beginning in upstate New York with Sam Cohen, after she spent a stretch touring heavily with Fleet Foxes. Early last year, her friend Jon Seale offered her a week at his studio space in New York, where she further honed her ideas. Then she returned to North Carolina, later that year, finishing the album with Alli Rogers at Betty’s, Sylvan Esso’s Chapel Hill-based studio. Throughout the sessions, she felt decisive, empowered and complete in control of her creative vision.

“I offer these songs as flowers of gratitude to those who have seen me through my life,” Uwade says. “I share them with the world as a reminder to cherish opportunities for renewal.”

Florilegium‘s first single “Call It A Draw,” is a breezy, Afro-pop inspired tune anchored around a looping guitar line, a jazzy drum loop and a supple yet propulsive bass line serving as a restless yet mischievous soundscape for her gorgeous and expressive delivery.

“Over the past few years I’ve been trying to experiment with my songwriting process a bit more, and this song is one of the fruits of that exploration,” Uwade says. “‘Call It A Draw’ started with a drum loop, a chord progression, and a feeling of restlessness. The creation process was pure, playful, and visceral, relying less on structure and more on improvisation. This approach was really freeing and reflects the sense of release that I feel is central to the project as a whole.”

Directed by Jason Wishnow and featuring choreography by Manuelito Biag, the accompanying video for “Call It A Draw,” follows the rising artist after an presumably upsetting phone call, expressively dancing and running errands in a gorgeous, super modern home. But the phone seems to follow her.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sierra Spirit Shares Anthemic “American Pie”

Sierra Spirit Kihega is Tulsa-born, Connecticut-based Native American singer/songwriter, musician and creative mastermind behind the rapidly rising solo recording project Sierra Spirit. Storytelling is in Kihega’s blood. Growing up as a member of the Otoe-Missouria tribe and the Keetoowah Band of Cherokees, she spent afternoons and weekends driving around with her grandmother and visiting family on the reservation. With a black coffee in one hand and the steering wheel in the other, Kihega’s grandmother imparted life lessons through ancestral stories. “A central part of our culture is storytelling, and my grandmother turned everything into a beautiful story, big or small,” Kihega says. “I wouldn’t be the writer I am today if it weren’t for listening to her.”

Though she now currently resides in Connecticut, her music dwells with the red dirt of Oklahoma, where she was raised. “I’d always been a writer, but I started writing songs when I became very homesick,” she says. She missed long drives across flat stretches of arid landscape, the “insane sunsets,” and the proximity to family and community.

When she began sharing music online, she quickly found a community of fans, many of whom are fellow Indigenous creatives, who found kinship and understanding in the stories Kihega told. “There are things I need to heal from and it’s important to share, because I want other people who have experienced similar things to feel less alone,” she says. Before she signed to Giant Music, she had already earned both a growing fanbase and a critical acclaimed with the self-release of her first two singles “ghost” and “televangelic,” both of which appear on her debut EP. Those songs caught the attention of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, who awarded her a BMI Abe Olman Scholarship, which is given in the interest of encouraging and supporting the careers of young songwriters. 

Kihega’s debut EP coin toss was released late last year. With the EP, the Oklahoman-born artist renders a self-portrait in intimate detail, touching on themes of loss, addiction and mental illness. Inspired by artists like Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers, Spirit’s lyrics are frank vignettes. Although the collection of songs are deeply personal, she stressed that the struggles she and her family have faced aren’t uncommon in Native communities. 

“As a kid, I didn’t see an Indigenous experience reflected back at me in the media. Native people were always these outdated constructs in westerns,” Spirit says. “I want to be a voice for my community, amplifying that we’re still here. The culture is moving.”  

Kihega writes to memorialize people and experiences, but she also writes to overcome a history of mental illness. As a child, she was quiet and reserved, which made her fear she came across as unapproachable. “I had such intense anxiety that I spent my younger years keeping to myself out of fear of being misunderstood,” she says. Years have passed since, but Spirit still fixates on those lonely formative years when she felt like a self-described “pushover” and “kicked puppy” around her peers.

Last year, I wrote about EP single “bleed you,” a remarkably catchy tune that brought  Soccer Mommy and others to mind featuring bursts of banjo and slide guitar, which nod to the country music she grew up with. And at its core is a nostalgic portrait of the Oklahoma of her youth, and of a dangerously obsessive, heartsick kind of love.

Kihega begins 2025 with her latest single “American Pie.” The new single sees the rising and acclaimed artist, leaning into her rootsier/Americana/country side while still being decidedly pop orientated with an arrangement that features driving percussion, violin, plucked guitar and enormous, rousingly anthemic hooks and choruses.

“‘American Pie’ is a reflection on the American dream and the uncertainty of this point in time,” the rising Tulsa-born, Connecticut-based artist explains. “We all want our own little slice of it but we take what we can get and we take it as it is.”

Directed by Pierce Pyrzenski, the accompanying video for “American Pie” employs a video within a video motif, in which we see the filming of the video and some of the behind the scenes, suggesting that the dream isn’t necessarily the reality.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Yul Shares Subtle Yet Brooding Remix of Sylvain Hellio’s “Nous étions heureux”

Sylvan Hellio is a Rennes, France-based artist, who released his debut EP, L’homme du bois through Résiste Records back in 2023. The EP featured “Nous étion heuruex,” a broodingly atmospheric trip hop-like lullaby anchored around twinkling guitar and skittering beats and Hellio’s dreamy delivery.

Yul recently remixed “Nous étions heureux,” but his remix manages to be subtle: Yul retains Hellio’s dreamy delivery and much of the original production but the brooding air is emphasized through the addition of a supple bass line, and bit of 808 kick. The result is a remix that feels a bit murkier and eerier.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: South of France Teams Up with Little Trips’ Greg Laut on Breezy and Lysergic “Weekend Lover”

Led by Denver-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and creative mastermind Jeff Cormack, South of France is an indie pop project that sees Cormack and collaborators specializing in a groovy, beat-driven take on escapist, vacation pop. 

With South of France, Cormack has had his work featured in a number of smash-hit TV shows like Bojack Horseman and Shameless while receiving praise from American Songwriter, NPR, Rolling Stone and others. The Denver-based project has also opened for a list of acclaimed acts including Portugal. The Man, Young The Giant, Flaming Lips, Michigander and others.

Cormack’s forthcoming South of France album My Spirit Animal, My Baggage is reportedly one-part solo album and one-part collaborative effort with a series of vocalists, emcees and musicians. The album will feature two previously released singles:

  • “Universal Order,” a a heady yet accessible synthesis of psych pop, world music and hip-hop that’s crowd-pleasing and summery that also features Bilingual (Francophone/Anglophone) emcee Big Samir, who is one-half of The Reminders delivers a swaggering verse for the song’s hallucinogenic bridge and break.

  • “Something That You Said” a lysergic, blissed out bit of Tame Impala-like pop that serves s a lush and woozy bed for Big Samir and CRL CRRLL to trade swaggering bars and dreamily soulful falsetto vocals. 

My Spirit Animal, My Baggage‘s latest single “Weekend Lover” is a blissed-out lysergic bop featuring a propulsive, rubbery groove paired with lush, swirling textures, twinkling keys and ethereal vocals from longtime collaborator Little Trips‘ Greg Laut. While being a warm and breezy summery blast, “Weekend Lover” may arguably be the trippiest yet most hook-driven song of the forthcoming album to date.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Homer Teams Up with girl named GOLDEN on Mischievous, Wes Anderson-Styled Visual for “Wishing Well”

Acclaimed New York-born and-based drummer, songwriter and producer Homer Steinweiss has a storied career that started in earnest when he was just a teenager. He has been instrumental in helping bring the raw-but-receptive soul sound back into the mainstream through his work with Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley. Steinwess has also been behind the kit for nearly every contemporary soul outfit that has mattered. 

The New York-born and-based musician is now one of the most in demand drummers in the world, playing with the likes of Clairo, Solange, Adele, Silk Sonic and Bruno Mars, among a lengthy list of others. And much like his longtime bandmate Dave Guy, Steinweiss is stepping into the spotlight as a both a musician and producer with Ensatina, his first solo album released under the moniker Homer. 

Released last month through Big Crown Records, Ensatina is reflection of who Steinweiss is now and a testament of how struggle often brings about much-needed changes. He was dealing with considerable emotional turbulence; at the same time that his band Holy Hive broke up, a long-personal relationship fell apart, putting him in an uncertain place mentally. The fallout was significant enough for him to seek professional help. “I was going through these super manic highs and then very depressive lows,” Steinweiss explains. “And being in all that, it’s just so tough to imagine that the other side is there, that it’ll be ok.” But, with time, professional help, and support from friends and family, Homer made it through and has been forever changed. This album is a product of that period of his life.

For Steinweiss, creating the album was a refuge, and it put him back on track. Creatives across the world have an innate understanding of that. But the album is also a glimpse into the different energies that influences that make the man and the artist tick. And fittingly, the album is the beginning of a new, interesting chapter of Steinweiss’ life and career. 

In the lead up to the album’s release I wrote about three of it’s released singles:

  • “Deep Sea,” feat. Hether, a slow-burning and woozy love song set over a hypnotic back beat, a gorgeous, dreamy trumpet line and a strummed acoustic guitar line. The lush and meditative arrangement compliments Hether’s dreamily romantic delivery and lyrics, which includes a sweet nod to Steinwess now wife. The song seems to suggest that when we’re struggling in life’s deep sea, love — in all of its forms — can be the lifeline. 

  • “Rollin‘” a lush and swaggering Quiet Storm-like soundscape with skittering and plinking 808s, broodingly regal horns, bursts of strummed guitar and KIRBY’s ethereal delivery, which alternates between scatting and cooing lyrics over the lush production. 

  • “So Get Up!,” a strutting and swaggering bit of hook-driven genre-blurring funk anchored around dusty and skittering boom bap, twinkling synth oscillations and glistening and arpeggiated synth melodies serving as a lush and euphoric bed for MINOVA’s and Michael Rault‘s ethereal and expressive deliveries. Sonically resembling a slick synthesis of 80s synth funk, Rush Midnight and Tame Impala, “So Get Up!” reveals an artist with an adept production style. 

Ensatina‘s fourth and latest single “Wishing Well” featuring girl named GOLDEN is a brooding track anchored around a trippy yet soulful groove that’s influenced by late Miles Davis-like jazz, electronic music, soul and trip-hop paired with skittering and chugging drums and glistening synths serving as a woozily lush soundscape for girl named GOLDEN’s sultry cooing. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Wishing Well” reveals an artist with a unique, playfully genre agnostic sound.

Directed by Ben Steiger Levine and Jordan Fein, the accompanying video is a Wes Anderson-inspired romp shot in and around one of the most gorgeous buildings in NYC, the New York Public Library, that captures the pair’s mischievous misfit-like energy.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Plumes Shares Broodingly Cinematic “Jeanne’s Visions”

Veronica Charnley is an acclaimed Montréal-born Paris-based singer/songwriter and guitarist, who is best known as the creative mastermind behind Plumes, her solo recording project that sees her drawing from contemporary pop and classical music.

Charnley’s fourth Plumes album, Many Moons Away is slated for a Friday release. The soon-to-be released album’s second and latest single “Jeanne’s Visions” is a broodingly cinematic track featuring strummed and plucked guitar, a soaring string arrangement paired with the Montréal-born, Paris-based artist’s ethereal delivery. While sonically nodding at Dark Side of the Moon-era Pink Floyd and country, the song is inspired by the story of Joan of Arc, who one afternoon while in her garden, first perceived voices, intertwined with church bells, guiding her to her calling, Charnley explains. She adds that “the arrangement uses harmonics in the guitar and viola, giving that otherworldly sound and the rhythm in the guitar during the verses is reminiscent of Jeanne’s trotting horse as she heads for battle.”

The accompanying video for “Jeanne’s Visions” features the acclaimed artist in a garden on a sun-dappled day, much like one Joan of Arc had her vision.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Terrain Vague Shares Breezy “Funambule”

French indie duo Terrain Vague — Marion and Valentin — can trace their origins back to when the pair met at a party in Southern France. During that party, the pair talked about their common passions for Michel Berger, Haruomi Hosono, Elli and Jacno, Bonnie Banane, Véronique Sanson and André Breton’s poetry.

The following day, they texted with each other with “our duo should be called Terrain Vague.”

Terrain Vague’s latest single “Funambule,” is a breezy and mischievous synthesis of krautorck, psychedelia, 70s library music and tropicalia featuring glistening and arpeggiated analog synths, a fluttering flute line, bursts of angular guitar and a propulsive, motorik-meets-70s am rock-like groove paired with dreamy vocal melodies and harmonies singing lyrics inspired by the board game Snakes and Ladders. While sonically “Funambule” may draw comparisons to Laure Briard, Corridor, Pavo Pavo, and others, with a hint of wistful nostalgia, the song as the duo explains is inspired by the a member’s father, a former clown and magician, who spent his life walking a fine line.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Oslo’s Doif Shares Mischievously Genre-Defying “Red Hot Heaven”

Andreas Lanesjord is an in-demand, Oslo-based musician and producer, who has been a member of the acclaimed Norwegian pop outfit Anna Of The North’s band for the past six years. While a member of the acclaimed Norwegian pop act, the Oslo-based musician and producer quickly made a name for himself nationally with high praise for early live performances at Øya Festival, Trondheim Calling and Havstrøm Festival.

Lanesjord recently stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his recoding project Doif. He then signed with Norwegian tastemaker label Propeller Recordings, who recently released his latest single “Red Heat Heaven,” which will appear on his highly-anticipated debut EP I’m All Ears slated for a November 15, 2024.

Inspired by the likes of Thundercat, Toro y Moi and Flying Lotus among others, the Norwegian producer and musician’s work draws from and meshes elements of progressive R&B, electronic and indie pop — with a playful sense of humor.

“Red Heat Heaven” is a slow-burning and stormy bit of Quiet Storm-inspired R&B featuring bubbling and twinkling synth melodies, buzzing bass synths and a strutting bassline and a lysergic breakdown. Sonically bringing a synthesis of Thundercat and Tame Impala to mind, the song explores destructive relationships, addiction and a desire for chaos.

The self-directed, stop-motion animated video for “Red Heat Heaven” features a toxic puppet couple, who inspired by the destructive tendencies of many of the world’s current leaders, believe that they can only find true happiness in a dystopian hellscape.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Sophie Jamieson Shares Gorgeous “Camera”

London-based singer/songwriter Sophie Jamieson released two EPs in 2020 that caught the attention of Bella Union Records, who quickly signed the rising British artist, and released her Steph Marziano-produced full-length debut, 2022’s Choosing.

Choosing was a subtle reworking of the sound that Jamieson quickly established through her first two EPs. While her first two EPs flirted with playful experimentation, her full-length debut featured a much organic, simpler and intimate sound, centered around arrangements of live drums, bass, cello and piano that are roomy enough for Jamieson’s mesmerizing vocals to take the spotlight.

Jamieson described the songs on her first two EPs as “black holes” and while Choosing manages to cover similar thematic ground, it never takes its eyes from what lies beyond, never fully releases its grip when its telling her to let go. The album is deeply personal documentation of a journey from the painful rock bottom of self-destruction to a safer place, and imbued with a faint light of hope. Focusing on the bare bones of each song, the album’s material is influenced by songwriters like Elena Tonra, Sharon Van Etten and Scott Hutchinson, and sees Jamieson singing openly about longing and searching, of trying, failing and trying again, and the strength of love in its varying forms. 

“The title of this album is so important,” Sophie explained. “Without it, this might sound like another record about self-destruction and pain, but at heart, it’s about hope, and finding strength. It’s about finding the light at the end of the tunnel, and crawlingI towards it.” 

Ultimately, Choosing asks the listener to look deep within themselves and to show them that they can take whatever pain they’re experiencing, and choose, to some extent, how they let it affect them; whether they let it burn them down or whether they choose to look it straight in the face. “The songs are bursting with something, and that energy just needs to be reshaped into love for the self,” Jamieson explained. “I can say this from a place of having learned now how to love and care for myself. The love that reverberates through this album is like the green shoots of something I have happily learned to nurture into my present day.” 

The London-based artist’s highly anticipated sophomore album, the Guy Massey and Jamieson co-produced I still want to share is slated for a January 17, 2025 release through Bella Union. The album is a deeply personal reflection on the cynical nature of loving and losing, the anxiety we can’t keep out of our relationships and the perpetual longing for belonging that drives us to keep trying and failing, to find a home in others. The album sees Jamieson lifting the lid on the roots of how we love and digs in even deeper, leaning into our deficiencies but from a stronger, healthier place that is much less afraid of the pain that inevitably comes with feeling everything.

Sonically, the album’s material is reportedly much more exploratory, playful and detailed with a richer palette. The raw emotion of Jamieson’s songwriting and delivery is joined by new instrumentation, including omnichord, harmonium and sub-bass, as well as rich string arrangements by Josephine Stephenson that help to weave a yearning connection through the beating heart of the album’s material. “There’s a lot of warm autumnal colors, and then more glittery, dark, starry skies. Something about it all has really come together to illustrate some things that I didn’t know I needed to articulate in this way”, Jamieson explains.

I still want to share‘s second and latest single, album opening “Camera” is a brooding and stunningly gorgeous song which begins with Jamieson accompanying her expressive delivery with strummed acoustic guitar that swells and builds up with a cinematic arrangement of strings, shuffling drums and twinkling keys to a slow-burn fade out. The song captures a narrator, who’s slowly unraveling with a woozy precision.

“I wrote this song when my heart was broken and I was trying to hold everything when it didn’t want to be held,” Jamieson explains. “I wanted to be able to draw an outline around the pieces, fit them into a frame. Something in me knew that I’d find some peace if I just let things stay blurry, but everything in me wanted to find some focus. This song is the yearning, wrenching of trying to define a love that was less simple, more layered and less graspable than I could accept.”

Co-directed and shot by Malena Zavala and Sophie Jamieson in Brecon Beacons, Wales, the accompanying video for “Camera” features dazzlingly cinematic imagery.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: SUNSAY Shares Soulful and Introspective “Papa’s Song”

Andrey Zaporozhets is a Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician, whose career started in earnest back in 2000. Zaporozhets first captured audiences as one-half of 5’nizza. With bandmate Sergey Babkin, the duo gained recognition for a unique and authentic sound that paired acoustic guitar with soulful vocals and harmonies and thoughtful lyrics.

5’nizza went on hiatus in 2007. Zaporozhets stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with his solo recording project SUNSAY. Through the release of seven studio albums, two EPs and a handful of standalone singles, the Ukrainian artist has firmly established a sound that pairs soulful vocals and expressive and introspective lyrics that reflect his personal journey and experience. Thematically anchored in a message of finding common ground within and around us, Zaporozhets believes that his work has the power to create and inspire unity.

SUNSAY’s latest single “Papa’s Song” is the first bit of new material from the Ukrainian singer/songwriter and musician in over two years. Anchored around a classic, cinematic soul-inspired sound featuring a glistening Rhodes, shuffling rhythms, soaring strings, a supple bass line and soulful backing and lead vocals, “Papa’s Song” recalls What’s Going On-era Marvin Gaye and contemporaries like Monophonics and others. Lyrically and thematically, the new single is arguably one of the Ukrainian artist’s most personal to date. Written as a tribute to his father, the song explores the complex and conflicting emotions between fathers and sons, while reaching a point of understanding and accepting his father for the complicated, flawed, whole person he was with a sense of forgiveness.

Directed by Sam Bagdasarov, the accompanying video for “Papa’s Song” is shot in a gorgeous, cinematic black and white. We follow a young boy and the grown Zaporozhets but their roles are reversed, almost like the movie Big: The boy, wearing a false mustache for a significant portion of the video, plays the role of the parent with Zaporozhets playing the role of the child. Through this view, and the wisdom he’s earned through his life, the grown Zaporozhets comes to a deeper, empathetic understanding of his father; an understanding that he wouldn’t have come to when he was younger.