Image by RC Stills //

Elizabeth M. Drummond is once again garnering giggles with her latest clip.

If you’ve been following Elizabeth M. Drummond over the past few years, you’ll know that  she’s been partnering with Richard Clifford to shoot clips for her mesmerising indie rock catalogue. And today’s video adds to their swelling portfolio of off-kilter, vintage-y, kinda-comedy, kinda-dark visuals.

‘Clowns’ sees her lean into her folky roots, losing the drums and electrics we’ve heard on previous singles, letting the lyrics and her breathy vocals do all the work. It’s feels like an album closer – and I mean that in the most respectable way – perfect to be softly sung to her listeners with a smile in the corner of her mouth.

“I wrote this song in 2018, and for some reason, I kept revisiting the demo years later. I re-recorded it with Vincent McIntyre in late 2023,” Drummond says. “It wasn’t about anyone specifically but rather the idea of walking out on something that you think is wrong or a bit ridiculous, whether it be a situation, a group of people and their values, a belief system, or a past version of yourself that you’ve outgrown or just don’t relate to.

“I don’t love the idea of calling anyone a “clown” in reality, but in this song, I thought it was kind of funny, and a sense of humour in music is important to me. I really wanted a fiddle in the breakdown of this song, so I sent it to Rowena Wise (an incredible artist, producer & multi-instrumentalist). She did one take at home, sent it back to me and I was obsessed with it.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZeBsrRJIzc

Now to that slow zoom… This is going to be hard to do without including some sort of poo joke, but here we go… Shot with just a handful of set ups, the end result weirdly gripping with the camera doing all the work for us as Drummond plays the supporting cast (or maybe the number 2?) to the main star of the piece, a turd.

“I had a very clear and simple idea for this video – a one shot of a pretentious, old money pool party, with one very slow zoom where the focus isn’t clear until the end when it zooms in on dog shit. My partner (Rick Clifford) shot it and used special FX to create multiple versions of the same person,” Drummond says.

Anyways, go and get “lonely pissed” and listen to this one on repeat – stream it here.