La Luz - Strange World

What this video is

Released March 5, 2024, 'Strange World' arrived as La Luz's debut single for Sub Pop proper, following four albums on subsidiary Hardly Art. The video and song emerged from a period of personal upheaval for bandleader Shana Cleveland, including a breast cancer diagnosis, and reflects a broader mid-2020s cultural moment of post-pandemic reckoning, anxiety, and grounding. The video's surrealist bicycle-and-newspaper…

Why it matters

La Luz occupy a unique position in 2020s indie rock as inheritors of West Coast psychedelia, surf pop, and new wave, filtered through a distinctly feminist and literary lens. 'Strange World' marks a sonic pivot toward new wave and synth-inflected arrangements while retaining their signature vocal…

The director

Vanessa Pla is a self-taught Latinx independent freelance director born in Chicago and raised in a Cuban/Puerto Rican household, based in the Austin, Texas area. Known for surreal, colorful, and female-driven music videos, she interned at Richard Linklater's…