LA threesome Communicant, who combine ’60s psychedelia and R&B–stained indie pop, will be releasing their debut LP this fall, for which they worked with MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser on production.
According to lead vocalist/songwriter Dylan Gardner, their new track “Spotlight” was inspired by a wild night in Sin City. “I was in a van driving down the strip with the Bee Gees ‘More Than a Woman’ blasting and it was a profound experience,” Gardner recalls. “The people you meet on the streets of Vegas can change your night instantly, which is fascinating. When I got back to California I was listening to a lot of disco and psych, spinning a lot of Syd Barrett/Piper at the Gates–era Pink Floyd, and this hard groove evolved in the studio and we went down that rabbit hole.”
Continuing to draw on Alice in Wonderland inspo, the band sways beneath a disco ball with glitter-smeared faces in the hallucinatory visual, of which Gardner explains: “I wanted the video to live in a kind of teenage-psych wonderland. When I close my eyes and listen to the song, it evokes images like you see in the video: the whistling pink cowgirl, a row of people snapping at a disco ball. I love playing with the tangible and intangible, so the ‘trippiness’ of the video is just pulling from all of that.”
Communicant’s self-titled debut comes out October 25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6TA0e8py_E
