Zombies Crash Beauty Pageant in Little Dragon’s Creepy New Video
Little Dragon‘s latest LP, Nabuma Rubberband, is filled with slinky electro-R&B slow-jams – not your run-of-the-mill inspiration for music videos filled with bloodthirsty zombies. Director Nabil’s creepy new clip for “Pretty Girls” continues where the Taylor Cohen-directed “Klapp Klapp” video left off, with a zombified female transported from a graveyard to a bar beauty contest – where all hell breaks loose.
50 Best Albums of 2011: Little Dragon’s Ritual Union
While not as disturbing as the “Klapp Klapp” video (which featured an unnamed female writhing in a religious temple and bleeding from her hand into a freshly dug grave), Nabil’s continuation of the story is still deeply weird. As the character is bound and thrown into a van by a gang of evil-looking men, another zombie emerges from the grave; a foreshadowing of the bleak events to come.
After arriving at the pageant (and getting dolled up backstage), the female zombie walks out in front of the crowd and sings a few words of “Pretty Girls.” As tension rises between the drunken bar patrons, a horde of zombies arrive at the scene – but the clip cuts out just before the true gore erupts. (Let’s hope another sequel is in the works.)
Nabuma Rubberband was released on May 9th, with singer Yukimi Nagano noting the musical inspiration of pop icon Janet Jackson earlier this year.
“When you put some of Janet’s really slow stuff on you feel like you’re floating,” she said. “That feeling really influenced me and maybe that’s why there are quite a lot of slow jams on the record. In the past we’ve been a bit self-conscious about making slow jams after ‘Twice.’ Then we wanted to make dance music which we did with Machine Dreams, and then Ritual Union still had a dance vibe, but with this album it wasn’t about that. The intention was about whatever we felt strongly about.”