Lael Neale - Tell Me How To Be Here

What this video is

Released February 20, 2025, as the lead single from Altogether Stranger (Sub Pop, May 2, 2025), 'Tell Me How To Be Here' documents Neale's psychological and geographic re-entry into Los Angeles after three years of rural isolation in Virginia. The video and song function as an artifact of post-pandemic urban dislocation — a phenomenon experienced broadly across indie artistic communities who retreated to rural…

Why it matters

Represents the contemporary apex of minimalist drone pop within the Sub Pop ecosystem — a genre lineage tracing from early 4AD dream pop through Spacemen 3's drone minimalism and American Transcendentalist folk. The video's lo-fi handycam self-direction is a deliberate aesthetic and economic…

The director

Lael Neale is an American singer-songwriter and visual artist signed to Sub Pop Records. She has released multiple albums including Acquainted With Night (2021), Star Eaters Delight (2023), and Altogether Stranger (2025). She maintains an ongoing practice of…