Here's what's up with Hoodlem: the Melbourne duo—who would prefer to remain nameless right now—work a minimalist kind of R&B with a sinuous bassline that perfectly complements the singer's fluttery vocals. If you like BANKS and 2-step leaning 90s sould, you will dig this. The pair have been silent for a year until they dropped this track "Kintsugi"—named for the Japanese art form of repairing something broken with golden dust. In this case it's a relationship that needs a stitch up and mend. Beyond the song, which is captivating and detachedly cool, the video, premiering below, is creepy as fuck.
Ever see that Japanese horror Ring? Well this promo very much has the vibe of that cursed VHS tape: black and white and flickering and full of bodies contorted, dark figures lurking, and faces stretched into a terrifying moving rigor mortis.
Director David Ward had this to say about his collaboration with the band: "I'm also really influenced by Hoodlem's production sensibility; a mashup of old and new, digital and analogue, real and fake. So we tried to emulate that in the clip by using a variety of different shooting formats and alternating between them; kind of like we're stepping in and out of somebodies head. Although the track has this really smooth, swampy, quite sexy groove behind it, I wanted to try and find something to contrast that: something that would alarm and unsettle rather than seduce."
Mission fully accomplished! 