Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are continuing to commemorate the 20th anniversary of their landmark self-titled debut with today’s premiere of the album’s first-ever official music video, “The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth,” co-directed by award winning filmmaker David M. Helman (IDLES, Vince Staples, American Football) and Daniel Henry (Julien Baker, Foster the People, Kurt Vile). Given carte blanche by Clap Your Hands Say Yeah founder and frontman Alec Ounsworth, the clip is a “celebration for the incompatible and the base models of all things, human and machine” says Helman, represented by a local hero who is a strip mall computer repairman (played by Eric Rahill). The protagonist gets glimpses into the customers’ lives while he tries to fill his own life with beautiful moments.
“I feel like there is a duality between the new and the old in the song – New York and West Virginia,” says Helman, who collaborated with Ounsworth on his 2014 album Only Run. He adds, “Electronics felt like real-world portals to jump seamlessly through time, to tap into virtual memories in a narrative way.”
Helman brought on co-director Daniel Henry, a fellow enthusiast for detail. Henry reflects, “Once we knew we were planning on swirling the digital lives of the customers on screen, we both took it as a personal challenge to fill this video to the brim with references from growing up on the internet.”
While most music videos are meant to add imagery to a song, this clip flips the script and has the track act as more of a soundtrack to the visuals. The key to making this concept successful had everything to do with the creative liberty Ounsworth gave to the directors.
“It’s not often an artist or project lets us run wild with the concept and inject it with all our favorite things – Alec rules,” says Helman.
“Twenty years ago, I stubbornly refused many music industry tools, one of which was music videos,” says Ounsworth. “My reasoning was that the listeners should be able to create their own visual accompaniment to the songs rather than have something ostensibly pushed upon them. The result was that no official video was ever made for the first album.
“I have since softened my stance on this after having considered the possibility that a music video might instead be thought of as a collaboration between artists (musician and director) who have mutual respect for one another’s work. In other words, I am happy to now let go and allow David Helman (whose work I sincerely admire) to put his and Daniel’s own interpretive stamp on ‘The Skin of My Yellow Country Teeth.'”
