She & Him - Don't Look Back

What this video is

Released in January 2011, 'Don't Look Back' arrives at the apex of She & Him's cultural moment, when Zooey Deschanel's dual celebrity as actress and indie pop artist made her a central figure of the New Sincerity aesthetic in American indie culture. The video's retro-futurist premise—imagining tomorrow through the optimistic lens of 1950s American consumer culture—directly mirrors the duo's musical ethos of mining…

Why it matters

A defining artifact of the 2008–2013 indie pop revival, this video exemplifies the era's strategy of using theatrical retro-pastiche to signal cultural literacy and ironic sincerity simultaneously. Its practical-effects comedy aesthetic anticipates Konner's later work on Drunk History, and its…

The director

Jeremy Konner is an Emmy-nominated writer, director, and producer based in Los Angeles. He co-created and directed Drunk History, the Emmy Award-winning Comedy Central series produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. He also co-created Netflix's Waffles +…