Rilo Kiley ＂The Frug＂ - Rilo Kiley ＂The Frug＂

What this video is

Released in 1999 as a promo for Rilo Kiley's debut self-titled EP, 'The Frug' music video exists at the intersection of Los Angeles indie rock and the late-90s Sundance independent film scene. Director Morgan J. Freeman had placed the song in his film Desert Blue and used that relationship to produce the video on minimal resources. The video marks the beginning of Jenny Lewis's publicly documented transition from…

Why it matters

As Rilo Kiley's first music video, this artifact documents the band's earliest visual identity before mainstream recognition. It represents the lo-fi, film-world-adjacent mode of indie rock promotion that preceded digital video distribution, and is a primary document of the late-90s LA indie scene…

The director

Born December 5, 1969 in Long Beach, CA. BA in Film Studies from UC Santa Barbara (1992); MFA from NYU Graduate Film Program. Debut feature Hurricane Streets (1997) became the first film to win three awards at Sundance (Audience Award, Best Director, Best…