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Music

Hoodlem's Video for "Kintsugi" Is Made of Nightmares

The mysterious Melbourne duo return with an R&B flex and an unsettlingly excellent video.

Here's what's up with Hoodlem: the Melbourne duo—who would prefer to remain nameless right now—work a minimalist kind of R&B with a sinuous bassline that perfectly complements the singer's fluttery vocals. If you like BANKS and 2-step leaning 90s sould, you will dig this. The pair have been silent for a year until they dropped this track "Kintsugi"—named for the Japanese art form of repairing something broken with golden dust. In this case it's a relationship that needs a stitch up and mend. Beyond the song, which is captivating and detachedly cool, the video, premiering below, is creepy as fuck.

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Ever see that Japanese horror Ring? Well this promo very much has the vibe of that cursed VHS tape: black and white and flickering and full of bodies contorted, dark figures lurking, and faces stretched into a terrifying moving rigor mortis.

Director David Ward had this to say about his collaboration with the band: "I'm also really influenced by Hoodlem's production sensibility; a mashup of old and new, digital and analogue, real and fake. So we tried to emulate that in the clip by using a variety of different shooting formats and alternating between them; kind of like we're stepping in and out of somebodies head. Although the track has this really smooth, swampy, quite sexy groove behind it, I wanted to try and find something to contrast that: something that would alarm and unsettle rather than seduce."

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Mission fully accomplished!

Hoodlem's self-titled debut EP is out on 3.25 via Fingers Crossed Records and Caroline Australia in NZ / AU.