Pom Pom Squad are gearing up to drop their debut album Death of a Cheerleader, and the quartet has now shared the new song “Crying”.
This single combines garage rock guitars with gloriously aggrieved vocals by Mia Berrin. She stretches out the word, “Crying,” wailing the melody with a scoop of glam, a touch of grunge, and a pinch of a Broadway belt.
“This song is honestly sort of a self-drag,” Berrin said in a statement. “I think during the Ow cycle, I convinced myself that through writing these songs I could completely exorcise the demon that was my depression. As It turns out, no amount of songwriting is a substitute for medication and therapy. In terms of thinking in a narrative arc, I knew I wanted to write a song that felt like a bridge between the guitar-based world of the record and the cinematic 50s/60s inspired world of this record. Ultimately it became about a meta-feeling — being angry at yourself for being depressed. The character of this song is basically my ego: the part of myself who doesn’t learn, makes the same mistakes constantly, is flaky, can’t admit she’s wrong, is self pitying and who wraps it all up in a bow the color of self deprecation. When I was in college, I joked with my friends that my placement in the 9 alignments was “Chaotic Stupid” which became kind of a persona of it’s own. My dumb-bitch-self. In short, the song is me calling myself whiny. Very glam!”
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Speaking of glam, the music video from director Julia Sub draws on the fashion and thrills of film noir. Berrin is seen weeping in a movie theater, sulking on a bed, cleaning up in a bathroom mirror, and standing in a tall bow and short dress as black leather hands stretch menacingly over her body.
“This video in many ways is a love letter to the all-consuming act of crying, as well as a confrontation with isolation,” Sub said. “My favorite part of this video is how fear is materialized in the form of hands creeping into frame, emphasizing the feeling of being swallowed by the weight of our anxieties. The visual inspiration for this video came largely from old Film Noir aesthetics and the painfully obvious ovsession Mia and I have with the absurd and abstract works of David Lynch.”
Check out “Crying” below. Death of a Cheerleader is out June 25th. Previously, Pom Pom Squad shared the singles “Lux” and “Head Cheerleader”.
