Dessa Achieves Pre-Pandemic Goals in Her “Life on Land” Video

The singer/rapper’s third “IDES” single includes a vibey visual shot at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room.
Dessa Achieves Pre-Pandemic Goals in Her “Life on Land” Video

The singer/rapper’s third “IDES” single includes a vibey visual shot at Brooklyn’s Sultan Room.

Words: Kim March

photo by Jessy Gonzalez

March 23, 2021

Since the pandemic hit a year ago, any sense of routine we’ve established in our lives seems to have dwindled away—including the media we would look forward to consuming, which suffered release date pushbacks in recorded music, constant reschedulings in live music, and whatever that Warner Bros./HBO dump was in film and TV. In order to combat this, though, Doomtree singer/rapper Dessa announced a new initiative this year where she’ll reveal a new single once a month, in the middle of the month, naming the project IDES after the ancient Roman term for the day that lands in the middle of the month.

The third installment of this project lands today with the reveal of “Life on Land,” a vibrant electronic track that balances the extremes of pop music, boasting some hard-hitting choruses in the midst of near-ambient verses. The video is equally vibrant, and does even more to evoke life pre-pandemic. “Before the pandemic nixed touring, the Sultan Room was on my shortlist of New York venues I’d love to play—it’s a vibey, intimate spot in Brooklyn with a hypnotizing light wall and a bunch of dim, weird, sexy corners,” she shares. “Filming the “Life on Land” video there, we essentially fired up the lights and pressed play on the song. Jessy Gonzalez captured the footage and Erin Busko edited the final product. (Thanks to both—total pros.) The otherworldliness of the lights seemed to match the spirit of the lyric—being spun out by the human world, and occasionally dragged somewhere else, older and more elemental.”

Watch the visual below.