Photo by Philip Cosores
Listening to Sleigh Bells’ “Rill Rill,” perhaps the most immediately gripping track from 2010’s indie blockbuster Treats, I think of vast dandelion fields, sunny skies, overripe strawberries, fat blunts, and high school bathrooms–it’s a song about adolescent anxiety, after all, set to the tune of a bright, acoustic groove.
But the video takes things in a different direction, to say the least. Derek Miller is pushed out of a car and left for dead on a desolate stretch of highway; Alexis Krauss wields switchblades, bleeding telephones, and a Natural Born Killers swagger. It’s like as if John Hughes directed a remake of Kill Bill, which isn’t what most people would have expected from Sleigh Bells, but it’s glorious in its own surreal, gory way. And nobody rocks denim jackets like Derek and Alexis.
