Director Alice Teeple takes that question into psychological territory. In the clip, Dani Mari moves through the picturesque Catskills and an abandoned former mental institution, while Matthew Deegan, who also styled the video, appears as an androgynous, mischievous presence beyond reach. Their connection is expressed through distance as much as movement. They wander, dance, cross paths, and seem to occupy different realities, as though memory has placed them inside the same room without granting them the same moment.
The slow motion gives Slingshot the quality of a recollection stretched beyond its natural dimensions. A creek, a corridor, a broken window, a wall covered in graffiti: each location begins to feel less like a fixed place than part of a mind trying to preserve an experience after its emotional context has vanished. Dani’s composure gives the images an unnerving calm, while Deegan’s playful movements introduce instability around the edges.
There are traces of David Lynch and Maya Deren in the way identity and space become unreliable, along with touches of The Twilight Zone and Kafka. The chorus, I wanna get crazy with you, becomes a plea directed toward memory itself. She misses another person, but she also seems to miss the freer, stranger self that existed in their company.
“The abandoned asylum immediately came to mind as the right setting, placing her alone in this desolate world, cut off from that energy, yet still possessed of an unnerving sense of peace,” says Teeple. “Matthew was the perfect choice to introduce this kind of playful androgynous chaos, and this presence plays beautifully against Dani’s stoicism.” – Post-Punk.com
Director Alice Teeple, with Bates helming the visual effects, carries that sensibility into a video partly filmed around New York’s Financial District, transforming crossed paths into romantic slapstick with a corporate-era sheen.
“We wanted to make this look as authentically from the 80s as possible,” says Teeple. “I am a big fan of shows like Moonlighting and movies like 9-5, so I jumped at the chance to try my hand at that with Abbi and Jenny. I borrowed some ideas from The Twilight Zone and the Boomtown Rats video for Banana Republic, they brought a great Working Girl aesthetic to their style. I loved the idea of missed connections due to transit troubles, crossed wires, and rotten timing. In the end it all works out, though! We all need a lighthearted distraction from the troubles of our world right now, and we created a delightful little vignette together.” – Post-Punk.com
That same push and pull shapes the video, directed, filmed, edited, and photographed by Alice Teeple. “The concept was ‘What about a bunch of friends doing karaoke?’” John says. Niabi pushes it further: “But a little Lynchian, inching towards fun/absurd.” Speaking about the early conversations with Teeple, Niabi recalls: “When I was talking with Alice, who shot our music video, her initial thoughts on the concept were, I think, intrigued. She was like, ‘This is so fun and unusual and kind of goofy,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, why zig when you can zag?’”
That instinct to zag gives the clip its charm. “And I think that’s what makes this music video different,” Niabi continues. “Here we were embracing quirk, fun, joy and grief, sharing with immediacy this moment in time. We are riding the line crossing over into that dark place where you don’t want to go but because you are emotionally so down, you do, and it’s really hard to explain how dark it is, but you are still trying to carry on.” That may be the most precise description of “Old Moons” possible: a song and video poised between emotional collapse and collective release, where silliness becomes survival and performance becomes a way of keeping despair from swallowing the room whole. – Alex Baker, Post-Punk.com
Filmed partly outside the Federal Reserve, the video for Girls, co-directed guerrilla-style by Bobilin and Alice Teeple, captures this tension with sharp, theatrical precision. Amid the marble monoliths of the Financial District, the duo performs within the architecture that enshrines inequality. The setting becomes pure satire: prophets of equality standing on the steps of capitalism’s temple, transforming it into an altar for the false religion of self-optimization. – Alex Baker, Post-Punk.com
