The track’s title, “Despair,” isn’t a fair warning for the new video from Las Robertas. For nearly the entirety of the song’s duration, we stare despair in the face. In this case, despair takes the form of an older woman in a futuristic silver jumpsuit (just like when Kenan and Kel went to the year 3000) sitting in the back of a convertible, staring wistfully at the camera—and into our souls. The Costa Rican garage pop trio’s video is a study in observed solitude; the viewer feels lonely simply by watching someone else contemplate her own isolation.
Coming off the recent US release of their latest album, Days Unmade, on Burger Records, Las Robertas complement the hazy, distorted guitars and distant, reverb-drowned vocals of “Despair” with an equally abstract yet straightforward video. Like the jarring, jerkily repeated clip of four people in red colliding, “Despair” and its video merge in chaotic harmony.
Las Robertas are also making two US stops this month, playing Viva Pomona festival this Sunday, July 19 and San Diego’s Soda Bar on Thursday, July 16.
