Pete Freedman
Music Video Premiere: Check Out The Visuals For Sam Lao's “Nirvana.”
In the nine months removed from the release of her nigh-universally lauded West Pantego EP, Sam Lao's done more than just establish herself as a creative force to be reckoned with in the studio and, increasingly so, in live settings.
Thanks to her collaborative efforts with music video director Jeremy Biggers, who directed the performer's “Pilgrims” and “Haze” clips, she's also capably set herself up as a visual splendor — a feat she continues with “Nirvana,” the twosome's third go at putting West Pantego tracks on film.
And this latest effort is unique in at least one sense: For the first time, it finds Lao and Biggers creating visuals out in the real world, removed from the safe confines of a studio shoot.
“I don't want to divulge the exact location because Jeremy will probably kill me,” she says, laughing, of the setting the two used for the “Nirvana” shoot. “It's, like, his secret spot now. I'll just say that it's in Oklahoma.”
Well, wherever it is, the location works quite well in the case of the new video, providing a raw, wild and wide-open energy to a Blue, The Misfit-produced track that's meant to conjure up that exact feel.
“For me, 'Nirvana' is about searching in the vastness for clarity and peace,” Lao says of the song and its accompanying video in a phone call this morning. “So we wanted this feeling of being out in the world, all alone.”
That's a feeling, one imagines, that's fleeting for Lao these days. She's pulled the reins back some of late, but thanks to an unending onslaught of adoring regional press and almost incessant area performance schedule, Lao has rather indisputably become among the area's most-watched up-and-comers. She'll continue this upward trend this weekend while performing at the fifth annual Homegrown Festival in Main Street Garden Park, and again later this month while performing as part of the bill at Fort Worth's Rad Fest on May 24.
Then? Well, she's not so sure.
“I'm working on some new music,” she teases. “I might have a new single soon.”
In the meantime, though, she offers up the below video for “Nirvana,” which Central Track is proud to premiere. Check it out.
