Zola Jesus - Vessel

What this video is

Released October 2011 as the lead single from Zola Jesus's third studio album Conatus (Sacred Bones Records), Vessel arrived during a pivotal moment of critical recognition for the post-witch house and art-darkwave underground. The video's Cymatic imagery — rendering the artist's operatic voice as visible wave patterns in water — reflects a broader early-2010s fascination with synesthetic and scientific…

Why it matters

Vessel is a landmark of the 2010s art-darkwave video canon, establishing a visual grammar that merged natural science (Cymatics, entomology, geology) with surrealist landscape filmmaking. As the debut visual from Conatus — Zola Jesus's most critically acclaimed record at that time — it defined the…

The director

American-born French-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and curator based in New York City. Earned Film & TV BFA with Honors at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. In-house director for Sacred Bones Records; has directed videos for Alan Vega, Zola Jesus, The…