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Chris Staples, 'Hold Onto Something'

In our darkest hours, time seems to slow to an excruciating crawl. The mind races, desperate to find something to hold onto, while our whole sense of time, space, or even reality becomes warped. It's an unsettling but familiar feeling captured beautifully in a new video for the Chris Staples song "Hold Onto Something."

Directed by Spencer Getz, three sleazy characters roam the streets, broken and alone, moving eerily in slow motion as if in a dream. Each addresses the camera blankly, mouthing the words to the song in real time. It's a disorienting but alluring effect, and to pull it off the actors had to memorize and recite the song at three times its normal speed.

"Gotta hold onto something if I can't hold onto you," they sing, over and over, simultaneously frantic and completely calm.

"Hold Onto Something" is from one of the year's best albums and discoveries, American Soft, out now on Barsuk.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Robin Hilton is a producer and co-host of the popular NPR Music show All Songs Considered.