There is a sinister, high fashion aura that permeates the landscape of Desire‘s music video for “Zeros”. As I was watching it, I felt like I had been immersed in a Nicolas Winding Refn film. I didn’t realize that the band I was listening to had literally recorded a song for Refn’s 2011 film Drive, but I guess Desire’s sense of atmosphere rings through all of their creations.
Bandmates Megan Louise and Soo Joo Park drive through California’s magic hour with a shovel in the trunk and a single minded focus beneath their rock star facades. Their goal is to bury something deep underground the Hollywood desert and the soundtrack is an eerily soothing crooning in the background. Louise says that the song is meant to feel like a clock ticking forward through a final countdown and the sense of anticipation comes through flawlessly.
2020 felt like one long countdown — an endless period of waiting. Waiting for the next day, the next calamity or simply waiting for the year to be over. In “Zeros”, Park and Louise bury the past deep underneath he ground and then stomp all over it in stiletto heels. The video is high style both in its costuming and its atmosphere. Louise and Johnny Jewel who not only play alongside each other in Desire, but also run the record label Italians Do It Better, came across their bandmate and high fashion model Park within the high fashion world. Park says that her time in high fashion helped prepare her for the performance aspect of music but if she was at all nervous about venturing outside of her comfort zone, she mentions that performing alongside friends helped her to ease into it and go with the flow. “We’re celebrating camaraderie through our music,” she says. “I was able to trust the process because I was with my girlfriend and part of that is trusting each other’s abilities,” she says in a recent interview for Vogue. Adventure always better when you have a friend alongside you, whether that adventure is making music or burying something out in the middle of a California desert.