It’s been three years since Chairlift’s breakout album Something, but that doesn’t mean the band hasn’t been hard at work. The duo has kept busy producing choose-your-own-adventure videos and side projects, but the most significant, profile-boosting effort was certainly the work done with Beyoncé, producing “No Angel,” which appeared on the 2013 album Beyoncé. And now Moth, the group’s third album, is due out in January, and they’ve been promoting the hell out of it with some really solid singles, the most recent of which, “Romeo,” just dropped with a video that somehow matches the intensity of the song, which is a propulsive banger.
Constructed as a strict homage to Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film Chungking Express, the video finds singer Caroline Polachek racing through Chinatown in a black wig and getup similar to that of the film’s Faye Wong. She’s being chased by bandmate Patrick Wimberly, whose motivations aren’t clear but whose gait surely matches that of a serial killer.
The video is filled with the neon colors and frenetic shots of Kar-wai’s film, which took Hollywood tropes and shot them through a Hong Kong lens. At a glance, the video seems to be doing the reverse, and so could potentially raise a few eyebrows. At any rate, the song is pretty great. Watch the video below.