Video premiere: Royal & the Serpent, ‘Overwhelmed’

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Royal & the Serpent (Photo by Conner Sorensen)

Royal & the Serpent, the persona(s) of singer-songwriter Ryan Santiago, make all-nerves-exposed alt-pop tunes with minimal production and maximum tenacity. She professes to embrace both her Gemini sides, the “sweet sunshine angel” (the Royal) and the “freaky devil maniac” (the Serpent). The collision of the two makes for some wild art.

Submitted for your approval: “Overwhelmed,” the artist’s debut single for Atlantic Records, is perhaps the catchiest panic attack a person could have in 2 1/2 minutes — not to mention relatable for anybody crazy from quarantine. “When I wrote ‘Overwhelmed,’ I was in a place of feeling really neurotic and over-stimulated,” she says. “It’s a song about my struggle with mental health, sensory overload, obsessive compulsive tendencies, etc. But I’m not so much trying to highlight or glamorize anxiety. … I just want the listener to feel heard. To feel like: I get you, I’m here for you, you’re not alone … Let’s dance it out, you know?”

The video for the song, directed by the artist and Conner Sorensen, was shot on 16mm film and almost has the feel of a 1960s or ’70s case study. She dances it out with four friends — you get the feeling they might be just figments of her imagination — but it’s not enough.

Santiago first released music as Royal & the Serpent in 2017. A classically trained ballerina as a youth, she had moved to L.A. at age 18 and dove headlong into music at the urging of a co-worker (who eventually became her manager) at a bartending gig. “He heard me singing a song I’d written and said to me, ‘What are you doing with your life? You need to do something with this,’” she says.

Since, she has earned attention for such songs as “MMXX” and “Salvador Dali,” as well as the still-unreleased “Bad Bad Blood,” featured in the Season 6 trailer for ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder.”

Royal & the Serpent will celebrate her new release with a drive-in performance at 6 p.m. Sunday from a “secret” L.A. rooftop. It will be live-streamed on Songkick’s Instagram.

||| Watch: The video for “Overwhelmed”

||| Also: Stream “MMXX” and “Salvador Dali”