Exclusive Music Video Premiere: VHS or Beta

 

Who says old bands can’t learn new tricks? On VHS or Beta’s fourth album, Diamonds & Death, the duo of Mark Palgy and Craig Pfunder move away from the wailing guitars and three-minute pop songs that characterized their last full-length, 2007’s Bring on the Comets. This time, the band—which recently relocated to Brooklyn from Louisville, Kentucky—is all about thumping dance grooves. Diamonds & Death is filled with club-ready tracks inspired by the tunes Palgy and Pfunder love to listen to at Tandem, a Bushwick bar that favors synth-heavy music. 

That influence is easy to hear in “Breaking Bones,” a pecussive single with a pulsing beat that makes its dark lyrics (“I have a hard time judging what’s real/I’m breaking bones just to prove I can feel”) hit even harder. We’ve very excited to premiere the song’s phantasmagorical video, which overlays black-and-white footage of a couple with flashes of brilliant color. The strategic deployment of electric, shifting patterns echoes the song’s own electronic sound—and adds a thrilling new level to a tune that’ll sound right at home when it’s inevitably pumped out of a dirty pair of speakers in a Williamsburg watering hole.

 DIAMONDS & DEATH IS OUT SEPTEMBER 27. FOR MORE ON VHS OR BETA, VISIT THEIR WEBSITE.