NYC dreamgaze band PANIK FLOWER released their new single and video “ocd.” The single is the second track from rearview, their sophomore EP that arrives on April 30. “ocd” rolls off of vocalist Sage Leopold’s tongue as the pointed, yet syrupy, “obsessive consumption diet.” With a guitar riff floating in outer space, the song remains shackled to earth by a formidable rhythm section. Haunting and anxiety-ridden, “ocd” is an unending loop of cyclical bingeing.
“The song explores the obsessive and addictive relationship we have with media consumption in today’s world and how that shapes us as individuals,” shares Leopold. “It has a complete chokehold on our daily functions living in the modern world even when you’re aware of how toxic it is. The chorus really drives this point home with the repetition of the lines ‘you catch yourself but you can’t catch a break, you catch yourself but you can’t look away.’”
The single also arrives with an erratic official video directed by Aji Bass. Filmed primarily at Porter Studio in Brooklyn, with additional footage shot in upstate NY, the video is a visual juxtaposition between stability and disorder.
Bass shared that, “For the ‘ocd’ music video, we wanted to lean into a grungy ‘90s aesthetic and let the themes of the song guide the edit. The more composed wide shots of the band represent ‘reality;’ a typical PANIK FLOWER rehearsal or performance. The video quickly devolves into an implied destabilized mental state by the first chorus. Intrusive thoughts make their way into the video in the form of quick, frenetic cuts and teasing a mysterious silhouetted figure who continuously appears and disappears. The structure of the song lends to this juxtaposition, between chaos and stabilization then back to chaos, until we end where we started: wide on the band, back to their reality, maybe just a little more disheveled than before but still standing.”
Guitarist Jordan Buzzell continues, “Visually, we were inspired by classic 90’s grunge videos like Sonic Youth’s ‘Bull In the Heather’ and Garage’s ‘Stupid Girl.’ We wanted the ‘ocd’ video to exist across time periods and serve as an homage to the early days of rock music video making.”
