“I’m actually pretty straight-edge,” explains Los Angeles based grunge-pop singer-songwriter Soko. “I had never had weed until I was 27.” Despite this, her new single “Ocean Of Tears”, was penned while the singer and actress – she was the voice of Isabella in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) and also bagged a Cesar award nomination in her native France for 2012’s Augustine – was monumentally blasted. “My friends were making fun of me for being such a square, so I started writing music while smoking every now and then. I wrote ‘Ocean Of Tears’ completely stoned out of my mind.”
It was, of course, perfect stoner logic for her to recreate that same high for the video, a giggly, grainy, psychedelic day in the life recorded with an 1980s Fisher Price VHS camera. “I wanted to lose control, lose a sense of self, and just have fun,” she says. Working on the concept with director Nina Ljeti – whose second feature film Soko will be starring in later this year – they headed to a host of friends’ houses to shoot pussy cats, bunny heads, donuts, snorkels and swimming pools, for a wonderfully wonky trip down the rabbit hole which came with a hefty hangover for the singer. “It actually took me a week to recover because my body is so not used to it!” she reveals.
Soko’s new album My Dreams Dictate my Reality is out March 3
