Video: Zola Jesus, ‘Lost’

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Zola Jesus (Photo by Shervin Lainez)

“Ask for all your wisdom here / give me space to disappear,” Nika Roza Danilova, aka Zola Jesus, intones in “Lost,” her first true single since 2020’s “Krunk” and the opening track off her forthcoming album “Arkhon.” Released today, “Lost” finds the singer-songwriter and producer at her most spellbinding and bone-chilling as she insists that “Everybody I know is lost” over brooding percussion and swarming production. She co-produced the track with Randall Dunn, who also gets a mixing credit.

“It’s true,” says Danilova. “Everyone I know is lost. Lost hope, lost future, lost present, lost planet. There is a collective disillusionment of our burning potential. As we stray further from nature, we drift from ourselves. ‘Lost’ is a sigil to re-discover our coordinates and claim a new path.”

In an accompanying video, Danilova decamps to a sprawling, snowy landscape in central Turkey where she descends into a network of candlelit caves.

“I wanted to shoot the video in a place that carried a lot of energy, with someone that I felt understood the spiritual backbone of the song,” says Danilova. “It was a surprisingly natural process to make this video with [director] Mu Tunç in Turkey. I put my faith in him and in Cappadocia, a labyrinthine city built within 60 million-year-old caves. Throughout human history these caves have served as a citadel for so many different groups of people who went there to get lost. It is a testament to the resilience of humanity, and the durability of our earth.”

“The story of ‘Lost’ is a visual litany of devotion,” Tunç shares. The video, he explains, “reflects the exodus of the true self through the mystical environments of Cappadocia. Zola Jesus is for me like an outcast philosopher of today’s confused society.’’

“Arkhon,” due June 24* via Sacred Bones, is Danilova’s sixth album as Zola Jesus. Her last album was 2017’s “Okovi,” but she’s released a handful of bonuses, remixes and live recordings since then.

* Updated May 5 with a new release date for the album.

||| Watch: the video for “Lost”

||| Previously: Live at the Teragram, “Okovi,” “Exhumed,” “Dangerous Days”