Video premiere: Katie Burden, ’20 Mile’

Kevin Bronson on January 26th, 2016

0

Colorado native Katie Burden debuted in 2014 with the EP “My Blind Eye,” an eclectic batch of folk noir that put the former journalism student and art-schooler in the same orbit with some of the 4AD label’s erudite songstresses. The EP was made with contributions Jenn Turner, Ben Shepard, Jonny Polonsky and producer/drummer Norm Block, whose label, Cautionary Tale Records, released it. Burden is back in the studio, working on a full-length targeted for a summer release, but first there is this dark but enchanting video from Dylan Haley for the woozy EP track “20 Mile.” It’s equal parts dream sequence and allegory.

The video was Haley’s first venture into animation, using the singer-songwriter as a model for the protragonist. “I was going for a children’s storybook feel … one of those classic children’s stories that’s a little bit creepy, the kind that no one would ever write today (at least not for a child),” Haley says. “The song seems to me about a journey, but it’s not specific, so made the narrative dreamy. Katie came over and we put a cloak on her. I took many photos of her in all sorts of positions, climbing falling, turning, running. I then simply traced the photos to achieve the makeshift animation that I ended up with. … The amount of work I had to do was fantastically more than I had ever imagined.”

||| Watch: The video for “20 Mile”