Kevin Bronson on April 26th, 2018

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There’s scarcely a feeling more electric than the early days of being in love, and that magic is captured beautifully in director Martin Kenna’s short film for the new Jake Bellows song, “Tattoo.” Bellows is an L.A.-via-Omaha singer-songwriter who made three albums (2002 to ’08) fronting the band Neva Dinova, made a split EP with Bright Eyes, released a solo album on Saddle Creek Records and has since collaborated with a host of artists, including Whispertown. Bellows’ dreamy, world-weary-but-hopeful indie-rock struck the young director, who last year created visuals for the songwriter’s “Little Bird.”

“Jake’s songs have a sort of beautiful melancholy that fit perfectly with cinematic depictions of real life,” Kenna says. “‘Tattoo’ is a song Jake performed years ago and … for whatever reason it resonated with me and I knew I wanted to make it into a short film.”

The video stars Ryan Menchaca and Maria Corpuz and actually features passages of other Neva Dinova music — including, as the intro, the drop-dead gorgeous 2002 song “Did You Disappoint Your God?” “Ryan and Maria were truly so great in this because of their natural chemistry,” Kenna says. “The story follows two young people falling in love. We’ve all been there, where we’ve had an amazing night with someone and have not wanted it to end.”

Meanwhile, the “Tattoo” is among the many highlights on the compilation album “Friends and Family, Volume 1,” coming May 11 via singer-songwriter Maria Taylor’s Flower Moon Records. It boasts songs from the likes of Orenda Fink (Azure Ray), Louis Schefano, Nik Freitas, Whispertown, Umm, Viva Violet and Mike Bloom, among many others.

||| Watch: The video for “Tattoo”

||| Live: Jake Bellows opens for Alessi’s Ark on June 5 at the Bootleg Theater.