The video, which was shot and directed by Briana Capozzi, shows the singer drifting around New York’s department stores
Songwriter Aerial East is used to being an outlander. As the daughter of a military family, she has spent much of her life in motion, growing up in Europe, then Texas, before finally settling in New York. Her music – which feels floaty, adrift, and intimate – reflects this sense of rootlessness, and finds peace in it. “I just wanted [my music] to be healing and calm,” she says, “something you can listen to even if the world is ending.”
Aerial’s latest single The Things We Build is a further exploration of these themes. Taken from her new album Try Harder, which was released earlier this month, it is about feeling untethered and uprooted in your daily life. “The Things We Build is about struggling to feel ownership over a life you are building with someone who seems to have a more solid foundation,” the musician tells AnOther.
The song comes with a suitably dreamy, soft-focused video, which was shot and directed by AnOther contributor Brianna Capozzi. In it, we see Aerial drift around Macy’s in a towel, sleeping in the department store’s beds and find herself at home among its mannequins. The footage is interspersed with surreal symbolic nods to American culture, with Playboy bunnies posing in front of military battleships and the hurried shopping crowds of Times Square.
“Brianna and I conceptualised the video as a sort of wacky karaoke video or home movie,” says Aerial, “but we ended up understanding it as a comment on capitalism and consumerism.” You can watch the video in full above.
The Things We Build was shot and directed by Brianna Capozzi. Makeup was by Yumi Lee and styling by Emma Wyman. All clothes by Vaquera.
Try Harder is out now via Partisan Records
