Yeah Yeah Yeahs could have a second career as casting directors. The New York City-based trio marked Halloween by sharing their video for “Wolf,” starring Severance‘s Britt Lower in a very Severance-like role. The video poignant portrays the disparity between external appearances and internal desires.
The Allie Avital-directed video begins with Lower sitting at the breakfast table with her presumed husband, prim and proper. He’s reading the newspaper, and she’s sitting silently so as to not disturb him until she’s distracted by a blue jay outside the window. She chases it into the woods, inspired by its wild nature. Suddenly, she has cuts on her face and blood on her hands. “I’m hunted like a wolf,” Karen O sings. “I feed, I feed / Like a wolf.” And by now, Lower is our wolf — hunting everything in sight, including Yeah Yeah Yeahs and her clueless man back home.
“It was our great fortune to collaborate with the powerhouses Allie and Britt on this video for ‘Wolf,’” Karen O said, per Pitchfork. “Allie casts a spell with the gorgeous world she weaves — always with teeth that bite, and Britt embodies all the contradictions in the themes of ‘Wolf’ so enamored with her performance that’s got as much heaven as it does hell. We were beside ourselves with excitement when Allie cast Brit as the lead in the video, YYYs are serious nerds for Severance, what luck when the stars align.”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs released Cool It Down, their first original album since 2013’s Mosquito, on September 30. They had announced their comeback this June, around the same time they played their first UK shows in nine years.
Watch the “Wolf” video above.