First Watch: Spires, 'In Between'

"These days are all I know," sings Spires guitarist and songwriter Matt Stevenson, but it's clear that musically and visually, the New York indie outfit can capture pieces of the present and the past — even those pieces portrayed in slightly terrifying 1970s informational films.

In their strange, trippy new video for "In Between," directed by Kyle C. Mumford, fuzzy footage of '70s public awareness films is blurred into a VHS-style snapshot of bygone PSAs. Car crashes, claymation and chariot rides blend with footage of the band playing on a rooftop.

The music feels nostalgic, too. Spires' dreamy vocals and pseudo-psychedelic guitar are a fresh recollection of the unsettling video footage's era.

"My imagination tends to drift into dark areas a lot faster than it should and I think a lot of the lyrics in 'In Between' sort of reflect that," Stevenson told us in an email. "I kept this in mind while thinking about ideas for a video and after I met Kyle this past summer I sent him about and hour and a half worth of these eerie, almost funny public information films from the '70s. He cut them up and mixed them in with VHS footage he shot of [guitarist/bassist] Jack [Collins] and I on my roof and his own stop-motion animation."

Spires' debut self-titled EP was released Nov. 13.

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