The trippy groove of Hot Sugar’s “Mayday” evokes a robotic, space-age drug headspace all on its own, so it’s only fitting that its new video is as mind-bendingly enthralling as the track. In this semi-sequential narrative carried on from last year’s “You Look So Pretty” video, Hot Sugar’s Nick Koenig becomes a babycore drug kingpin, replete with child henchmen, candy cocaine, and a pet blue-tongued lizard decked out in a gold chain. The video’s characters are all as stoned and stupefied as its viewers, from the sleeping man with a pink eyemask that reads “Leave me alone” to Koenig himself, walking around with a snake on his arm and a parrot on his head.
If “Mayday” is a stroll through the inner machinations of Nick Koenig’s mind, then his life must be some sort of fever dream that looks like the lovechild of the Scarface mansion, the Addams Family house, and Dylan’s Candy Bar. Toeing the line between entrancing, delightfully confusing, and downright disturbing, Hot Sugar has my eyes firmly glued to the screen, and I never want to look away.
