Mac McCaughan - Circling Around

What this video is

Released August 2021 as the second single from McCaughan's second solo album The Sound of Yourself (Merge Records, September 24, 2021), the video arrives in the late phase of COVID-19 pandemic cultural isolation. McCaughan — a 30-plus-year veteran of indie rock as frontman of Superchunk and co-founder of Merge Records alongside Laura Ballance — wrote and produced the album largely alone in his basement studio after…

Why it matters

Represents the mature solo voice of a Chapel Hill indie rock institution navigating the sonic territory between new wave pop, synth-driven ambience, and hook-oriented indie rock. The video's DIY, nature-forward visual language is emblematic of early 2020s low-budget indie video craft: eschewing…