Water From Your Eyes: “It’s a lot harder to screw up when the whole point is to screw up”

The New York art-pop duo discuss laughing their way through new album It's a Beautiful Place, and choosing to point their anger in a direction of positivity

Photography by Adam Powell

You don’t really come across music videos like Water From Your Eyes ‘Playing Classics’ anymore. In an age when most are just lyrics scrolling over a backdrop, this one, as simple as it is, is all storytelling. It follows the not-so-normal day of a humble teddy bear. Loved in its New York apartment and then accidentally misplaced, it falls in with unruly skateboarders, gets mauled by a dog, and is then abandoned by the side of a road.

Just as the story seems over and all is lost, the bear is found, rescued, placed in front of a microphone, and becomes the band’s star frontman.

Metaphor? Absurdist joke on pop culture? A hard-hitting exposé on the lives of cuddly toys? If it’s any of those, Rachel Brown and Nate Amos, the duo behind Water From Your Eyes, aren’t letting on. When I ask if the video's narrative – being ripped from innocence, finding the world hostile, and joining a band – resonated with their journey, the pair just laugh. “It’s actually an homage to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ ‘By the Way’ video,” Brown corrects me. As it turns out, the promo was shot by their friend James Dayton, whose parents directed many of the Peppers’ videos during their Californication era. “When I found out, I was like, ‘James, you have to include a direct rip-off.’”

Shot on a minuscule budget, Water From Your Eyes knocked it all out in a day, almost exclusively filming around their Ridgewood, Queens neighbourhood. “It was the chillest music video set I’ve ever been on,” Brown recalls. “Each scene took, maybe… I don’t think anything more than 20 minutes; luckily, most of the places in the video are right by our houses.”