Behind the Video: tawnylawns Discusses Her Video Clip for “MOSS”

In putting together her new album Overheard At Nickel City, tawnylawns took a really interesting perspective when it came to drumming up inspiration. Released last month via FOIL Imprints, the pop musician and video artist used the people around her to dictate the themes and concepts she would use for the record. In 2021, she decided to pack up and leave New York City for the more laid-back confines of Austin, Texas. Not knowing many people there, she started frequenting local bars. While sitting there having a drink, she began to pay attention to what she was overhearing. Then she started to jot down some of the details of the conversations she was hearing.

The stories she overheard became the basis for the record. As a collection of tracks, it is a collection of pop songs about transitions, late-life, love, and the humour and heartbreak of letting go. It’s like a scrapbook of moments in time, fragments of people’s lives that they didn’t necessarily mean to share. But these small details that tawnylawns picked up on became little truths that she could hold onto. It’s a new era for the singer-songwriter who’s also known for being half of the Brooklyn-based synth duo Kodacrome. She is also the co-founder of experimental electronic label FOIL.

As part of the album release, tawnylawns recently released the music video for her single “MOSS.” She joins us today for a Behind the Video interview, detailing the inspirations for the clip, how they evolved, some of her favourite ever music videos, and more.

What’s the concept behind the video? Help us to understand the video’s concept in more detail and how it ties into the lyrics.

tawnylawns: “‘Moss’ is a song about those rare individuals who see the silver lining in your personal darkness. For me, it’s my inherent fear of slowing down, demonstrated in the lyric ‘If you take time to stop/ the moss will come to swallow your body up.’

“For this video, I decided to poke fun at the futility of my own ingrained obsession with productivity by depicting outdated office supplies being overgrown by greenery, flowers, and moss. The goal was to show that no matter how slick and efficient we may be, our fate always winds up the same as we return to the earth, so we may as well conjure a little levity around the idea of it all.”

Was there anything during the making of this (or any other) music video that happened unexpectedly, or that you were surprised to learn?

“The biggest surprise to me was how supportive and enthusiastic everyone was in helping me source the old, outdated office supplies. From the folks at the State Surplus store giving me sweet deals on bags of old office supplies, to the manager at the UT Reuse store actually tracking down a few specific items for me (like the amazing pea-soup colored punch clock!), the prop sourcing wound up being a really uplifting, community-centric stage of the process. It felt like we were giving these old, retired pieces their chance for a second act!”

tawnylawns “Moss” single artwork

What was your favourite part of the creation of the video?

“I really enjoyed coming up with the technique for animating the exploding paper flowers, which wound up entailing cutting out and tinting many layers of petals, and building a lineup of different-sized buds to cycle through the photo series. The pops of pink really added a surprise aesthetic twist to the video outro, and also just gave me a bit of relief from the many hours of chartreuse I had been contending with.”

Any concepts where you started and midway through thought, “What the fuck are we doing?”

“I had originally spent months working on a hand-drawn rotoscope of myself for the lip-sync segments on the tiny Zenith TV, and wound up scrapping them for live video footage instead. I’m usually really drawn to multiple layers of filtering, and have used Xerography and other super analog processes for lip syncs in the past, but at the end of the day, I had to ‘kill my baby’ on this one to land on a look I was happy with. I’m no stranger to abandoning many months of work if it means I’m satisfied with the final result.”

How does the music inform the video in terms of visuals matching sound?

“The song had such an effervescent humour to it that I knew the video had to reflect that tone. I really wanted to poke fun at slick product commercials, while still having a bit of an ‘ice queen’ character taking herself too seriously center stage.”

Have you ever had such a great idea for a music video that you’ve written music for it?

“Absolutely. Music videos are my favourite art form ever, and I dream in music videos sometimes! Back in 2017, I made an entire miniature puppet video before any song for it existed. It was such a slow process to build the sets that it gave me time to bring the audio into focus as I crafted away with my hands.”

What are some of your favourite music videos? What about when you were growing up?

“I’ve always really enjoyed magical realist style videos that almost seem like a dream…like “Scissor” by Liars, or “What’s A Girl To Do?” by Bat For Lashes. The best gift music can give you is transporting you to a fantastical plane where you can access and process emotions and develop intuition that may otherwise hide beneath the material surface of our experiences. So I love when a video supports that journey.”

What music video director would you say is your favourite?

“This is an impossible question to answer! But lately, I’ve been rewatching the videos Jake Schreier has done for Francis & The Lights. I appreciate how simple and well-crafted they are. Just enough to keep you fully engaged with the music, without overwhelming or distracting you with a narrative.”

If you could get one guest to be in one of your videos, who would it be? Why?

“When I lived in South Williamsburg/Bed Stuy, I had this recurring pipe dream of spending a whole day tailing one of the little Hassidic kids, fly-on-the-wall/candid style. Those kids are all amazing at entertaining themselves screen-free, just zipping around the neighbourhood on their Big Wheels and playing with wooden blocks. I’ve thought about maybe filming my nephew sometime. Bring him to a junk yard with a baseball bat and just have him let loose! There’s something about a kid before they get too self-conscious. They’re on a different wavelength.”