Ocean Beach, the new EP from the N.Y.C.-based Lolo Zouaï, are two songs of quietly incandescent hybrid pop – where "Lose Myself" is beefy 808s over a magic hour Take Care vibe, "Jade" is comparitively bare to showcase her superb vocals, lit with both melancholy and playfulness. The track is a duet with Blood Orange, and today The FADER is premiering the song's video. Director Nick Harwood puts the pair in a tense-yet-vibey domestic setting and lets them wander, searching out something intangible, or each other, or both.
"'Jade' is the feeling of feeling nothing," Lolo Zouaï told The FADER in an email, "being numb to all the beauty around you because you’re stuck in your own head. But then at the same time there’s something beautiful about pain and sadness. ‘Jade’ plays on that string between beauty and pain. I think Dev and I both stepped out of our comfort zones for this song to create our own world.
"Nick Harwood (the director) came up with this great concept, and we wanted the camera to feel like a silent character in the video - as if someone was creeping alongside us the whole time. I think it really fits with the themes in the song.
"The opening bedroom scene was the first scene we shot. That was perfect for me because I was still half asleep haha. Dev pulled up a few hours later wearing my ‘High Highs to Low Lows’ merch which was sweet. I found out he was a fan of my music through an Instagram story of him listening to my song “Blue”. We connected shortly after that through some mutual friends, and ‘Jade’ came out of our first session together with Stelios [Phili, the song's producer]. In the kitchen scene, we used a split diopter lens which made us both in focus even though I was further away. I think that effect really emphasizes the feeling of being close to someone but feeling distant from each other. Dev and I don’t have any physical interaction until the final scene where you see us in the garden together. That was one of the last shots we did as we were losing sunlight, and by then Dev and I were really comfortable together."
Listen to Ocean Beach below on Spotify.
