Today, Los Angeles-based artist Hana Vu releases “Keeper,” the newest single from her upcoming album Public Storage, out November 5th on Ghostly International, following “Maker” and “Everybody’s Birthday.” “Keeper” is a pulsating new wave cut, replete with soaring dreamy synths and a cool-voiced narrator. The accompanying video, directed by Meagen Houang and choreographed by Jas Lin, sees Vu honing in on her artistic craft, both sonically and physically. It was shot in a single take on 16mm film by cinematographer Andrew Yuyi Truong and it’s a compelling exploration of feeling unnoticed. “Shooting ‘Keeper’ was really an intense experience,” says Vu. “We had a few choreography rehearsals leading in, and then on shoot day we rehearsed for about 9 hours and only shot in the last hour.”
“When I listened to ‘Keeper,’ I thought about how we’re all trapped by different societal expectations — whether it’s from work, family, friends or the devil inside ourselves,” says Houang. “I wanted to make a video that expressed the feeling of not being seen when all you really want to do is explode. By shooting the video in a single take we never let the audience off the hook. Just like Hana, we’re trapped in a cycle of being constantly ignored. I set the film in a family environment because as viewers we usually associate families with a sense of security and safety. The family environment created a contrast to Hana’s bursting performance and underscored the pain of not being visible, even sometimes by your own relatives.”
Watch Hana Vu’s “Keeper” Video
Storage units hold possessions on pause from the outside world, objects capable of reconnecting us to a time or place. Vu grew up with her family making regular use of public storage spaces in Los Angeles, moving every few years, leaving a mix of the sacred and the mundane to sit inside concrete and steel. The 21-year-old musician sees the art of making and releasing songs in a similar sense: “these public expressions of thoughts, feelings, baggage, experiences that accumulate every year and fill little units such as ‘albums.’”
Public Storage builds on the sound of Vu’s early work, underscoring her strengths as a songwriter with a deeper sense of luster, sophistication, and urgency. She calls it “very invasive and intense sounding music,” refreshingly out of step with contemporary trends; this is music to engage with rather than lean back to. For the first time, she welcomes a co-producer, Jackson Phillips (Day Wave), who helps Vu create a vast, grainy, multifaceted world to stretch into vocally, her distinct contralto drifting freely between evocative low-lit ruminations and soulful, skyward bursts.
Listen To “Everybody’s Birthday”
Listen to “Maker”
Pre-order Public Storage
[Keep on moving over to the subscription box.]
[Thanks to Yuri at Pitch Perfect PR.]
