Mistki has shared the music video for the final track from her 2016 album, Puberty 2, following the releases of videos for “Happy” and “Your Best American Girl.” “A Burning Hill” is a resolvedly drowsy track that begins by quickly declaring “I’m tired of wanting more/I think I’m finally worn” but then closes the album out on the small resolution of “And I’ll love the littler things/I’ll love some littler things”; it’s an ending that’s not happy, per se, but that finds a melancholy peace in the decision to continue to, as one gets older, accept joys that are smaller and smaller.
The song itself is not much longer than 2 minutes, and the video that’s just been released follows suit in being wholly unadorned — focusing most of its brief time on close ups of Mitski’s face or her hand, as it floats through the water or past a landscape in a car, basking in a seeming “love of [those] littler things.”
Mitski said of the filming of the video (which is directed by Bradley Gray):
The director and I spent a weekend just driving around New York and Pennsylvania while the camera kept running, and most of the time I’d forget I was being filmed. It felt like a vacation, but it was also quite emotional, as I was thinking about the song and what it means to me now while jumping in rivers and driving down dirt lanes.
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The video arrives in advance of Mitski’s upcoming North American tour; check out the dates on her website.