Indie wunderkind, Indigo De Souza, is rolling out her next album release with a… splat. The new video for “Kill Me” blends heartache with the grotesque — giving off some heavy Requiem For A Dream vibes. De Souza chirps in a fluffy soprano while digging her Kermit-green nails into a raggedy old cake. The video follows a Wrestlemania nightmare between a man and a pregnant woman, in their respective corners of a ring before slapping their bodies with the destroyed desserts.
To the uninitiated, cake sitting is all about the squirm/satisfaction factor. And the way “Kill Me” applies that spectacle to the even-more messed up performance of custody battles and divorce is revelatory. “Cake sitting is this wonderful art form, rampant with metaphors of creation and destruction, engaging in equal parts with desire and disgust,” said the video’s director Jordan Alexander. “It lends itself to the song and Indigo came over to test it out and was way better at it than I am.”
De Souza said she wrote “Kill Me” when she was “deeply consumed in a big, crazy love and coming to terms with the reality of living with mental illness.” She recorded a demo of what would become the song in 2018, sitting on her kitchen floor and singing into her laptop webcam. When she recovered the video years later, she barely recognized the broken girl she once was. “It was such a strange feeling watching the video because I couldn’t remember writing the song, but little bits and pieces of it felt familiar to me. It felt like it had been a lot longer than a year.”
“Kill Me” is the first single from De Souza’s new album, Any Shape You Take, which was produced by Brad Cook and recorded at Sylvan Esso’s studio, Betty’s, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Listen to “Kill Me” above and find the Any Shape You Take art and tracklist below. De Souza also announced new North American tour dates to support the album this fall, so find those below as well.
1. “17”
2. “Darker Than Death”
3. “Die/Cry”
4. “Pretty Pictures”
5. “Real Pain”
6. “Bad Dream”
7. “Late Night Crawlers”
8. “Hold U”
9. “Way Out”
10. “Kill Me”
08/26 — Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
08/27 — Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
08/28 — Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle Backroom
08/29 — Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
09/21 — Washington DC @ Songbyrd
09/22 — Philadelphia, PA @ PhilaMOCA
09/24 — Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere Zone 1
09/26 — Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
09/30 — Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
10/11 — San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
10/15 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Any Shape You Take is out on 8/27 via Saddle Creek. Preorder it here.