Premiere: JST FRNDS stage murderous plot in new video, ‘Long Nights’
The indie-pop duo flip their pop track on its head with a dark video.
Against a crime thriller backdrop, indie-pop duo JST FRNDS rework their glistening anthem “Long Nights” into a hypnotic soundtrack to murder. The visual, premiering today on B-Sides & Badlands, soaks the viewer with a dazzling color scheme and ace storytelling, courtesy of director Quentin Lesser, who keeps the viewer locked into an unexpected rendezvous of epic, bloody, and thrilling proportions. “Long nights drivin’ through your city / And I keep wishin’ you were with me, yeah,” Callie Dixon and Gabe Neal wax nostalgic, layering on a thicker thematic thread line. “I think we took this too far / You made me crash my car / I keep wishin’ you were with me…”
Lesser unravels the high-stakes narrative with sharp clarity, and each frame builds on the previous moment until even the viewer becomes tangled in the characters’ downward spiral. “The music video was an absolute blast to create. Honestly, we had no plans to shoot a video for this single, but our good friend Donny Herndon called us up and said he wanted to tackle a video with us,” the band explains over email. “He had done some work in Hollywood, and had his good friend Quentin down to direct it, so we said ‘why not?'”
They continue, “Everyone knew the time crunch with the upcoming release, so we kicked it into overdrive and got it done, and somehow brought a nearly 10 man crew along with us. Within 10 days we had conceptualized, written, produced, and filmed the video.”
As you’ll witness, the song’s jovial lean grinds against the video’s more macabre overtones. “Story-wise, we wanted to make something to contrast the lighthearted vibe of the song, so we naturally threw in a little dark humor. In the video we’re special agents (and couple) to an unknown organization, sent on a mission to apprehend a target. Plot twist: We aren’t very good at our jobs, and it is indeed a very long night for us. We had so much fun creating this with some really great friends, and we think it shows.”
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