Kevin Bronson on September 23rd, 2021

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Three videos, no waiting: Get your eyes on these new visuals from Hana Vu, Hank May and Maria Taylor …

HANA VU, “Keeper”

The follow-up to “Everybody’s Birthday” and “Maker,” “Keeper” finds 21-year-old Hana Vu diving into family matters on a New Wave tune frosted with synth and icy vocals. Meagen Houang directs the video, which was choreographed by Jas Lin and shot in a single take on on 16mm film by cinematographer Andrew Yuyi Truong. “Shooting ‘Keeper’ was really an intense experience,” Vu says. “We had a few choreography rehearsals leading in, and then on shoot day we rehearsed for about nine hours and only shot in the last hour.” Says the director: “When I listened to ‘Keeper,’ I thought about how we’re all trapped by different societal expectations — whether it’s from work, family, friends or the devil inside ourselves. I wanted to make a video that expressed the feeling of not being seen when all you really want to do is explode. By shooting the video in a single take, we never let the audience off the hook. Just like Hana, we’re trapped in a cycle of being constantly ignored. I set the film in a family environment because as viewers we usually associate families with a sense of security and safety. The family environment created a contrast to Hana’s bursting performance and underscored the pain of not being visible, even sometimes by your own relatives.” It makes for a poignant take on the track, which appears on Vu’s debut album, “Public Storage,” co-produced by Jackson Phillips (Day Wave) and out Nov. 5 via Ghostly International.

HANK MAY, “Where I’m Calling From”

Hank May’s album “One More Taste of the Good Stuff” comes out Oct. 15 via Dangerbird Records, a slab of downcast yet whimsical indie-rock, notable for the songwriter’s sharp lyricism. “Where I’m Calling From,” the follow-up to singles “NBC,” “2019” and “Patsy DeKline,” is a song about his hometown. “This song is about a hot day in Los Angeles,” May says. “It’s also about the times when becoming intimate with someone requires you to show them how sad and fucked up your life is. This song will humbly accept being called earnest, though it would prefer to be called sincere. Oh, and I named it after a song by my cousin David’s old band the American Princes, my way of tipping my hat to my number one influence growing up. His song might be named after the Raymond Carver story, if so then I guess that would make this a song named after a song named after a story named after a feeling.” The video is truly a full-circle moment: It was directed by Suzie Vlcek, who cast a 15-year-old May to appear in Silversun Pickups’ video for “Lazy Eye” back in 2006.

MARIA TAYLOR, “It’s Coming for You”

In 2019, Maria Taylor released a self-titled album, then earlier this year teamed up with Orenda Fink to restart the engines of Azure Ray for the album “Remedy.” Now she’s back, shrouded in reverb, indie-rock flag flying high, with “It’s Coming for You,” from a forthcoming EP (no details yet). Taylor is behind the wheel, frequently looking back, in the fun video for the track, directed by Alan Tanner (Aimee Mann, Jenny Lewis, the Mynabirds, Saddle Creek Records). “I’m one lucky lady to have Alan Tanner as one of my best friends,” Taylor says. “He is an amazing director and the funniest guy I know. Making videos with Alan is always so much fun and I truly love every video he’s ever made. I always know when I have a song that I think Alan will connect with, and this song reminded me of the old days when we were all partying together in Athens, Ga., in our early 20s. There was clearly only one person to call to make a video for this song.”