Even though they just released their debut album, The Great Unknown, a few days ago, Favored Nations has already accomplished a lot: Surahn Sidhu has written for Kimbra and Usher, and is the touring guitarist for Empire of the Sun. DJ James Curd has released music on James Murphy’s DFA Records. Morgan Phalen was the singer of Diamond Nights and featured on Justice’s 2011 album Audio, Video, Disco.
This dynamic trio has come together for an equally wide-ranging, 18-track debut album, and have collaborated with another talented entity in Young Black Youth for their new music video for “I Can See You”, which Nerdist is happy to exclusively premiere above.
If Wes Anderson created a Windows 98 screensaver, it may look something like this. Indie film, one-point perspective collide with vibrant computerized visuals and imagery of puzzles, disco balls, cats and spinning CGI cubes to portray the internal journey of a woman undergoing music-aided hypnosis in an attempt to restore her memory, with the band’s summery nu-disco song as the catalyst.
That matches Curd’s impression of the clip: he told us that it “perfectly blurs the periods of time that aesthetically inspired the creation of the song.” Of the album as a whole, Sidhu previously said, “I think all of us are at a stage in our careers where we have proven ourselves to ourselves. This project for us is pure enjoyment. We don’t look at things in terms of ‘making it big’ or search for bigger opportunity. We feel lucky enough to create the way we do. It’s always been about trying to craft interesting pop songs that make people think and dance at the same time.”
If you happen to be in Australia in late October and early November, the good news is that Favored Nations will be on tour in your area, so find more info about their upcoming shows here.
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Featured image courtesy of Cybele Malinowski
