Destroyer Debuts New Song "Girl in a Sling" With Dark Music Video

Dan Bejar’s forthcoming Destroyer album Poison Season is out on August 28 via Merge in the U.S. and Dead Oceans in the UK. Following the lead single “Dream Lover”, he’s shared the music video for a new track called “Girl in a Sling”. The video cuts back and forth between shots of Bejar, who’s working in a darkroom and singing in the shadows, and residential areas in decay.

As director David Galloway explains in a press release, the video’s tragic tone is meant to fit the album’s overall vibe:

Bejar sings a lot about cities and girls and injury, sometimes all at the same time. Sometimes they are the same thing, as surreal novelists would have us believe. Besides, people like to see Dan sing—which he doesn’t do a lot of in this video, but he does do a little bit. We wanted to make a video that dealt with central Destroyer themes: to some, Destroyer is a lech; to some, he is an arsonist; to some, he is a savior. To me, he is the consummate comedian, but he resists that role. So we decided to go the opposite way and make something sad, something tragic, something that fits the new record. The adage “comedy equals tragedy plus time” is attributed to Carol Burnett’s mum. Or it might have been Steve Allen. Either way, I always want Dan to do physical comedy, but he resists. He’s a natural, though. He’s the Pacific Northwest’s Buster Keaton, and I hope one day to share that with the world. One day. For now, though, there’s just this sadness. This poison season.

Read “Accidental Pop: A Conversation With Destroyer’s Dan Bejar”.

Watch Destroyer perform “Libby’s First Sunrise” on “City of Music”:

Comments are closed.