Video premiere: Double Wish, ‘Sugary Plum’

Kevin Bronson on January 19th, 2022

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Editor’s note: This video was re-released on Jan. 19, 2023, to introduce Double Wish’s EP, “Light Split Sparkle,” which comes out March 10, 2023. The write-up below is from the video’s original release in early 2022.

“Sugary Plum,” one of three singles released by Adam Sabolick’s new solo project Double Wish, is a cerebral indie-rocker that builds from a pulsing, woozy beginning to a crash-bang, guitar-ripping finish. Sabolick says the song is about “intoxication and the people you love” — at least, that’s the only guidance he gave filmmaker Justin Daashuur Hopkins when pitching him to do a video for the song.

Hopkins and actor Ru Storey took the song and wrote a love story around it, resulting in the poignant slice-of-life premiering here.

Storey stars as Them, experiencing a rebirth after a physically traumatic but spiritually liberating gender-affirming surgery. Katherine Zhang stars as Her (the titular “Sugary Plum”), whose acceptance calms the emotional turmoil besetting her partner. The pair get high and spend the day floating through moments of intimacy and elation.

“When I wrote ‘Sugary Plum,’ I was thinking about experiences relating to intoxication, acceptance and the people you love,” Sabolick says. “The song is composed of two contrasting elements, reflecting the intoxicating sensation of coming up and the dread of coming down. The first part of the song, the come up, seduces listeners through nearly-whispered vocals supported by pulsating rhythm and elastic delayed guitars. The second half of the song, the comedown, is reflective of psychological and intoxicated anxieties by way of angsty heavy guitar distortion and relentless melody.”

Hopkins imbues the video with rich subtleties, but ultimately it’s about the beauty of love, and of the abiding acceptance at its foundation.

||| Watch: The video for “Sugary Plum”