Kevin Bronson on September 1st, 2022

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Catching up with new videos from three artists who have album releases on the horizon: Young Jesus, A.O. Gerber and Young the Giant …

YOUNG JESUS, “Rose Eater”

You are often reminded, when listening to Josh Rossiter’s music as Young Jesus, that there’s little more emotionally devastating than the truth. Here’s where the songwriter goes on “Rose Eater,” the latest track from Young Jesus’ forthcoming album, “Shepherd Head” (out. Sept. 16 via Saddle Creek): “I’ve run away from disagreements and / Abandoned older friends / I’ve seen the past as pain / I once would rather be forgotten / Than live complexity and grace.” Ouch. “I wrote ‘Rose Eater’ on the piano and tried to record it. I used the internal mic on my computer because at the time I had lent my microphone to Emerald House, a beautiful DIY space and small community in L.A.,” Rossiter explains. “The recording of the piano sounded horrible. So I pitched it down and ran it through a million effects until it sounded like Enya or Peter Gabriel strings. The lyrics are in line with that ethos. Trying very hard to be the ‘ideal’ of something or someone, and finding the truth of oneself is very different and is perhaps discovered in the process.” The music video follows more of the process of writing the song — hear the album version here.

A.O. GERBER, “For”

Director Seannie Bryan’s video for the latest single from A.O. Gerber’s album, “Meet Me at the Gloaming,” was indeed filmed in the gloaming, the receding light, and Gerber’s slow emoting convey a tale of two turmoils. The title of the song is “For,” a big word in the context of a song whose lyrics cut to the quick. “I wrote this song about watching a friend go through a really difficult time and the shame of feeling like I didn’t know how to be there for them because I was too messed up myself,” Gerber says. “Intimacy in friendship can be so challenging. It’s a kind of vulnerability and closeness that I’m only just starting to feel safe practicing and I don’t always feel like I’m doing a good job.” Gerber plays the Airliner on Oct. 21.

YOUNG THE GIANT, “My Way”

The Madonna Inn is the setting for director Tanmay Chowdhary’s poignant video for the song “My Way,” which appears on Young the Giant’s “Act II: Exile” — the second of four mini-releases that ultimately will add up to their new album, “American Bollywood” (out Oct. 21). In ways obvious and subtle, it embodies the album’s mission as an immigrant story. The band’s Indian-American singer, Sameer Gadhia, says of “Exile”: “For the immigrant, exile is a voluntary sacrifice for opportunity: The loss of homeland is a pining that is always there, even subconsciously in the children of immigrants, whose parents’ loss is just a formless ghost that causes trauma rippling across generations.” Young the Giant headlines the YouTube Theater on Nov. 12 (tickets).