We last heard from Michael Love Michael last summer when she released a video for the single “Death Row” from her 2022 LP To Build Me a House in celebration of Juneteenth and Pride Month. Nearly a full year later she returned last month with a new single called “Bruiser”—a reflective ballad merging acoustic and electronic instrumentation as the songwriter contemplated her identity—which has now been revealed to be the title track from that last record’s forthcoming follow-up. Additionally, she’s sharing a second single today called “Deer” which presents a more intense, industrialist-pop sound as the vocalist sings about the recklessness of youth and, aptly, blasting Britney Spears. The song was co-written by MLM and Tracey, and co-produced by both writers alongside Reuben Butchart.
The track’s music video emphasizes the horror of the lyrics’ technology-plowing-through-nature vignette, as Michael Love Michael is first introduced from the perspective of a car on a dark backroad as she dons full cult-ritual regalia straight out of the first season of True Detective. “The video was made during a highly creative weekend in the remote woods of rural Vermont,” she shares. “I was camping with some friends and I told them how I’d been dreaming about making visuals for the song that, in a surreal way, captured the song’s themes of loss of innocence. I wanted to make my own blend of images inspired by something you might see in The Blair Witch Project or Midsommar. So I asked for my friends’ help, and we had a blast creating the end result, making everything from the wedding dress I’m wearing, to the horns and the face paint. What I love is how we relied on what we had. The special effects and editing I think take this visual to the next level.”
The clip was shot and stylized by those aforementioned friends, Brett Lindell, Ophelia Postcastle, and Anomali Ahna, and features FX by NULLNOSIS. Check it out below, and pre-order Bruiser ahead of its October 4 release via Get Better Records here.
