Beach House’s New Video for “Dark Spring” Makes Me Feel Like It’s 2011 Again

Beach House have dropped a third single from their upcoming album 7, this time accompanied by the project’s first real music video (prior singles had screensaver-ish placeholder visuals). “Dark Spring,” like the other material we’ve heard from the album, rips a bit more than the Beach House we’re used to, its driving rhythm section propelling the music’s gauzy textures from dream pop to full-throttle shoegaze. The song’s good, and so is the abstract video, but it jogged something in my memory. Call me a nostalgic simp, forever in thrall to the aesthetics that shaped my tastes, but this music video is 2011 as fuck.

Arty monochrome? Check. Hooded, mysterious figures? Double check. Identity-less expanses of skin? We’re in the House of Balloons era now, my dudes. All the “Dark Spring” video needs is a few inverted crosses and it’s close to a witch house clip, or someone’s aesthetic Tumblr circa 2010-2013. Beach House themselves saw their profile raise during this time, with their breakthrough releases Teen Dream and Bloom coming out in 2010 and 2012, respectively. They’ve grown musically since then, and it’s likely that the casual, black-and-white surrealism of the “Dark Spring” isn’t an overt attempt to resuscitate the general haziness of that time period. Still, if this didn’t make me want to pull out those old Clams Casino beat tapes… You can watch the “Dark Spring” video above.

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