Shearwater - You as You Were

What this video is

Released in February 2012 as the lead single and video from Shearwater's seventh studio album Animal Joy (Sub Pop), this video arrived during a moment of heightened critical attention to art-indie acts that foregrounded ecological, animist, and anti-humanist themes. Shearwater, led by ornithologist-turned-musician Jonathan Meiburg, had long threaded natural world imagery into their sonic identity; the Animal Joy…

Why it matters

A key artifact of early-2010s art-indie music video culture, demonstrating how Sub Pop-affiliated acts leveraged high-concept, low-narrative visual strategies to articulate post-rock gravitas. The video's animal imagery and stark chiaroscuro palette exemplify the documentary-inflected surrealism…

The director

American artist, filmmaker, author, and television writer. Her documentary The Mark of Cain was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and aired on Nightline. She was nominated for a WGA Award for her writing on HBO's Deadwood (Season 3). Her work spans…