Video premiere: Total Heat, ‘L.A. Song’

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Total Heat
Total Heat

The tug-of-war between two coasts (not to mention two hearts) plays out in “L.A. Song,” the latest sun-baked single from lo-fi provocateur Total Heat.

It’s the solo project of multi-instrumentalist and Girlpool drummer Ross Chait, who debuted with three singles in 2018 and then earlier this month released “On the FM” as part of Dangerbird Records’ Microdose series. Total Heat’s shambling synth-pop has the je ne sais quois of artists such as Ariel Pink, with a heart of gold. “On the FM” spoke to directly to “the cathartic and healing power of music,” Chait says, and by the end of director Ezra Ewen’s video for “L.A. Song,” that theme reappears, in a manner of speaking.

“‘L.A. Song’ is a dedication to my hometown and the second closest thing, Los Angeles and New York, respectively,” Chait says. “It’s about feeling like your heart is in two places at once, both geographically and in relation to another person. The meaning of it sort of took shape gradually as I found myself in a confusing period in life where the departure of someone I love (and thereby the end of a phase in our relationship) was imminent. But, as it hadn’t quite happened yet, I was reckoning with conflicting feelings of mourning the end of something while also trying to appreciate the present and reveling in the limited time we had left. If you’ve ever been there you know, it ain’t easy.”

“Now you’re goin’ / Now you’re gone,” Chait sings, crystallizing that feeling of being in limbo.

The video stars the songwriter’s bandmates in Total Heat, as well as Cleo Tucker and Harmony Tividad of Girlpool and Jillian Medford of Ian Sweet. “Actually the story we tried to tell with the video is, in a way, the opposite of where I was at when I wrote the song,” Chait says. “The end is near in both cases, but Jillian and Joel (Total Heat bassist Joel Jensen Heath) don’t make any effort to make it good. It sucks and they know it!

“Along the way they meet a cast of characters who, with their various bags of tricks, exasperate the already comically awful dynamic we see between the expiring couple. So it’s called ‘L.A. Song,’ but as you can see it’s really about New York, which is crazy.”

||| Watch: The video for “L.A. Song”

||| Also: Stream and watch the video for “On the FM”