Just over a year ago, bicoastal alt-pop group MisterWives released their fourth full-length album, Nosebleeds, a punkier take on the indie-dance sound they’d established when the project launched over a decade ago. In celebration of the record turning a year old earlier this month, the band is releasing a sequel LP of sorts today called Nosebleeds: Encore, which features re-recorded versions of the album with an array of female guest vocalists, as well as three additional collaborative bonus tracks. “Nosebleeds:Encore was not only another chance to celebrate our favorite record, but a chance to celebrate some of our favorite voices in music,” vocalist Mandy Lee explains of the project. “This album was all about setting free suppressed feelings unapologetically, so it only felt fitting to create an environment filled with all the incredible women who continuously inspire me to do so.”
One of the most exciting items on the track list is the opener, “Vultures,” which sees MisterWives team up with their serrated dance-pop peer Lynn Gunn, a.k.a. PVRIS, on an equal parts catching and seething indictment of the music industry’s misogyny. “I knew we needed someone with as much teeth as the music, and there was no one better to do the job than the iconic Lynn Gunn—who didn’t just bring the energy, but took the song to a whole new level!” exclaims Lee. “Her talent is genuinely one-of-a-kind, and having been a fan of her killer voice, songwriting, production, creative vision, and love for cats for years, finally getting to create together was such a privilege!”
The track’s music video invokes a heated therapy session, with both vocalists performing in front of a white void populated with nothing but a pair of chairs and a Newton’s cradle. “The video centers on the crux of the song, being ‘stuck inside of a game’ where we encounter Mandy, Lynn, and the audience all lulled or hypnotized into normalcy, falling in line, and becoming part of a system,” notes director Matty Vogel. “We shot most of this video in an endless white cyc with clinical overhead lighting and combined it with rotating and moving shots to make you lose your bearings and feel ungrounded. The beat of the Newton’s cradle suspends reality from the first shot, and the viewer is invited to be entranced into an environment where the ground’s not always beneath your feet!”
Check it out below, and stream the full LP here.
