Fleet Foxes - Grown Ocean

What this video is

Released in March 2011 as the lead video for Fleet Foxes' sophomore album Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop, May 3, 2011), 'Grown Ocean' arrived at the apex of the indie folk critical wave that had swept Fleet Foxes to prominence in 2008. The video's Super 8 documentary aesthetic — capturing the band as a loosely traveling collective in pastoral settings — embodied the New Sincerity ethos dominant in indie culture of the…

Why it matters

A definitive artifact of the 2008–2013 indie folk revival, this video encodes the Super 8 lo-fi documentary grammar that became a genre-wide visual convention. Its rapid montage structure — anomalous for folk music — demonstrates how sub-pop-aligned directors synthesized DIY film aesthetics with…

The director

Sean Pecknold is an award-winning film and music video director, animator, and writer from Seattle, Washington, based in Los Angeles. His work spans acclaimed videos for Fleet Foxes, Beach House, Dirty Projectors, and John Legend, as well as commercial work…