Sunny Day Real Estate - In Circles

What this video is

Released in 1994 on Sub Pop Records alongside the debut album Diary, 'In Circles' arrived in a Seattle music scene still reeling from Kurt Cobain's death one month prior. Sunny Day Real Estate occupied a paradoxical cultural position: signed to the label synonymous with grunge yet actively resisting genre classification and celebrity, famously refusing photographs and interviews while occasionally embracing…

Why it matters

Among the most important artifacts of first-wave emo's 1994 moment, 'In Circles' represents the Sub Pop underground's pivot from grunge toward emotionally confessional post-hardcore. The song and video together established aesthetic templates—stark performance spaces, anti-glamour visual language,…

The director

UCLA Film School graduate who began his directing career making music videos for Sub Pop Records in Seattle, working with artists including Sunny Day Real Estate, Mark Lanegan, and Sebadoh. He later co-created and named the character Derek Zoolander,…