Angels & Airwaves - Breathe

What this video is

Released in mid-2008 as the third and final single from I-Empire (Geffen/Suretone, November 2007), 'Breathe' arrived during Angels & Airwaves' most commercially ambitious phase. The band, founded by Blink-182's Tom DeLonge after that group's 2005 hiatus, positioned itself as a multimedia art-rock project drawing heavily from U2's stadium-scale guitar atmospherics and fusing them with emo-era emotional directness.…

Why it matters

Represents a pivotal artifact of mid-2000s U2-inflected anthemic alternative rock, documenting the emo-to-art-rock transition moment when post-Blink-182 artists attempted to elevate punk-pop emotionalism into grand, cinematic statement-making. The rapid editing pace and high-contrast warmth encode…

The director

Thomas Matthew DeLonge Jr. (born December 13, 1975, Poway, California) is the co-founder, lead vocalist, and guitarist of Angels & Airwaves and co-founder of Blink-182. He first entered filmmaking by directing a music video in 2004 and has since pursued film…