Indie rock band Yolkdrop released its music video for its song “Simulation’s Had Enough” on Tuesday on Youtube. The Bloomington-themed video captures the essence of the local house show scene, Yolkdrop bassist Grant Mitchell said.
When two people were shot outside of a house show at the Brickhouse last October, IU was catapulted into a campuswide discussion on gun violence and whether or not the university was responsible for notifying students of the crime immediately after it took place. After the dust settled, the house show community was left behind to deal with its newfound and misguided reputation for violence, said Mitchell, who lived in the Brickhouse at the time of the shooting.
Mitchell said he hopes the new music video displays that the house show community is actually a force of good. The video includes clips of people performing, dancing and having fun at house shows over the past six months.
“There were a lot of people who came out with negative vibes about the house show scene after the shooting,” Mitchell said. “That’s what I wanted to capture in the video, the joy of going to a house show and being around people like you.”
The five-minute video, which took a full week of 12-hour editing sessions for Mitchell to finish, includes over 400 shots of nature, friends, musicians, animals, street signs, his grandma and more, edited to play next to each other at the same time. One section of the video, released along with the band's new album, "Yolkdrop," shows people signing the lyrics in American Sign Language, and another shows gray scribbles forming on a black backdrop.
Mitchell said he wanted to reflect the turmoil of dealing with school, graduation and the aftermath of the shooting in his eccentric editing style.
“It was meant to represent a portion of my life over the course of six months and all the chaos and beauty that comes with that,” Mitchell said. “It’s kind of random, but I think life is kind of random.”
Maya Doss, who is seen dancing in some of the video’s house show clips, said Mitchell is a backbone of the local music scene. She said his choice to play more than one clip at a time resembles how people experience memories better than having one clip play at a time.
“I thought it was super beautiful because I felt like I was looking back on memories,” Doss said. “I felt like I was taking a trip through Bloomington from Grant’s perspective, and I think it’s cool he incorporated the music scene into that.”
Kevin Latz, guitarist and lead singer for Yolkdrop, wrote “Simulation’s Had Enough.” He said the song is about a relationship between two people facing the end of the world, and Mitchell’s personal relationships with the people featured in the video made it a good match for the song’s subject matter.
“I love how it’s so focused on people because that’s really what the song is about,” Latz said. “You can really see the emotion, everyone looks really happy and enjoying the moment.”
The video ends with four panels showing local bands such as Bike Wreck, Flower Mouth and Rosegirl performing for crowds of dancing people at various house shows. Though shots of random things such as a flickering candle or a Ferris wheel sometimes sneak into the mix, the focus of the video’s conclusion is on the local music community.
“Since music and the local scene is such a big part of my life, that’s what I decided to end it on,” Mitchell said. “It’s where I feel at home and where I feel the happiest.”
