Kevin Bronson on April 23rd, 2019

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Lily Kershaw writes captivating ballads and sings them as if she’s the only person in this entire noisy city holding a conversation. If you’re in a room where Kershaw is performing them live, extracting maximum weight from every note and phrase, it is literally true.

The 27-year-old is not the first writer to twist this city’s name into “Lost Angeles,” but her 2018 EP of that title, with its sharp imagery, sublime melodies and subtle humor, soundtracks the melancholy that can often pervade. Kershaw followed that seven-song mini-album with the November release of a three-song EP, “Work Tapes,” laying bare more of her piquant observations.

“Darker Things,” the first song from “Work Tapes,” gets a wry treatment in the music video from actress-director Noël Wells (“Master of None,” “Saturday Night Live”). Something about the eyes …

“When Lily released her EP and I heard ‘Darker Things,’ I fell in love with the song,” said Wells, who also helmed Kershaw’s video for “Another.” “She told me she had a vision of her walking the streets of Los Angeles with her eyes closed and doll eyes painted on her eyelids, and I thought that it was such an elegant representation of the song. The shoot was a really sweet DIY night. I filmed Lily for about two hours, and her dad was there spotting us because Lily was lip-syncing and walking with her actual eyes closed, and I was walking backwards into the streets, anything for the shots … probably a bit dangerous, but the intimacy comes through. The most romantic part was at midnight it was my birthday, and Lily drove me to her favorite view of the Hollywood sign to make a wish.”

Here’s to making eye contact with strangers:

||| Watch: The video for “Darker Things”

||| Also: Watch the video for “Another”

||| Live: Lily Kershaw joins Joshua Radin and the Weepies on the SiriusXM Coffeehouse Tour, which visits the Troubadour on Oct. 8 (tickets) and Oct. 9 (tickets).