Retrolux — "W/O U" Music Video Premiere + Interview (SR Exclusive)

Gainesville, Florida indie-electronic powerhouse Retrolux  are proving to be one of the most well-rounded acts in their scene with their music video for "W/O U", premiering exclusively with Suburban Rose Magazine. The video follows vocalist Anna James portraying a heartbroken girl as she wanders alone in vivid color through her town, traversing empty classrooms, arcades, malls, and even a Lowes, asking over and over:

"How do I feel without you?"

The music video is intercut with grayscale clips of the narrative behind why she sings: fights with a toxic significant other (portrayed by Matt Fowler) both in private and public that are the cause of their split and lead to her questioning of how exactly she feels "W/O" him. You can watch the video below in full. Keep scrolling for both an interview with Anna and Shaye about this premiere and links to where you can find Retrolux elsewhere!

Interview conducted by Gabrielle Miranda

In our recent interview we talked about the filming of the W/O U music video. How did you come up with the concept for this video?

Shaye: We wanted to have a video that was more than just a bunch of b-roll or shots of the band playing, and the lyrics of this song have a really emotional pull that made it easier to develop a concept for. But really the concept was pretty easy, the video is just an answer to the question of the chorus, “How do I feel without you?” She feels alone, and that’s what we illustrated with the video.

When listening to or writing the song did you envision this concept for a video for this song?

Shaye: No I don’t think so. One thing at a time! Haha.

Anna: No, not at all. We didn’t even plan on making a video for it when we were writing the song. We just decided later that we wanted to make a video, and “W/O U” was the song we liked the best at the moment, so we went with it.

How was it shooting the video in such public places? (as a photographer I know it can be VERY uncomfortable).

Anna: It actually wasn’t that uncomfortable. We purposefully went to these places at weird hours when we knew they would be mostly empty, so it was painless. The most uncomfortable part was probably at the skating rink in the last scene because there were other people there, and we were skating around the rink with a bright light on us from Shaye’s camera and our friend was holding a speaker behind me with the song playing, so that definitely drew some attention.

Shaye: It wasn’t that bad for me, but I was behind the camera the whole time. Just having the camera there made all of the fake fighting obviously staged which helped relieve some of the awkwardness. I think it might have been a little hard for Matt Fowler (the love interest) since he was the guy looking like an asshole, yelling at Anna in Public, haha!

What was a struggle of filming this video?

Anna: I had two main struggles with this video. The first was that I had to keep dyeing the tips of my hair pink because they were that color the first day we filmed. I was obsessed with the dye when I first did it, but then when I had no choice but to keep redoing it until the video filming was done, I was really over it. My second struggle was pretending to fight with Matt (who played my toxic ex in the story). He and I were just yelling random things at each other, and I couldn’t stop cracking up, so I guess my music video acting could use a little practice. By the end of it, we found a loophole where we had Matt just mouthing words at me with an angry face, and that way, I didn’t laugh as much.

Shaye: We had a few struggles. The video didn’t feel right the first couple passes, we had to go through and shoot some more scenes to fill in the story a little better. This video involved a lot of shooting over multiple days. We also accidentally lost some footage we really liked and also didn’t get some critical shots we were expecting to have. Overall, it wasn’t bad but there were [definitely] some hiccups along the way.

Did you learn anything from this experience (filming process)?

Shaye: Yes, definitely. I think we knew how much time and work it was going to take going into it, but even then I think we were a little naive about how much of a time commitment it was. We’re [definitely] planning on making more videos in the future, but I think our concepts will be a little simpler and probably rely a little more on post-production.

How does it feel to publish some of your work and have it be free for the world to judge?

Anna: I’m excited that it’s finally complete, and we now have some solid video content to throw up on our social media platforms. It’s always fun to upload something you’ve worked really hard on so you can see what people like about it.

Shaye: Feels great to finally be done with it! Haha. We’re happy with it. Especially for something we did ourselves. I know if we had paid an established company to make it for us, it could have been cooler or more well done, but I’m proud of us and what we made. I’m not super worried about the judgement because generally people either like it or they ignore it.

What are you hoping to hear from people after this video release?

Anna: I’m not really expecting anything. I’d just love for people to share it and obviously have a positive response.

Shaye: I’m not hoping for anything; if it resonates with someone, that’s awesome. If it doesn’t, we learned a lot and had fun doing it.

How does it make you feel to see a finished product of a piece of your own hard work?

Anna: It feels great. We’ve already started discussing how we can improve and make an even better video for our next one. It’s another notch in our band belt, and we’re excited to keep creating and evolving.

Shaye: It’s good to see it done. It’s cool to have something totally completed and up that we did completely ourselves.


Find Retrolux:
Spotify
Apple Music
Youtube

Website