Kelela - "A Message" (Official Video)

The L.A. singer Kelela made one hell of an impression with her 2013 single Cut 4 Me, singing over sparse, architectural dance music and conveying vast reserves of emotion without ever showing too much of herself. Since then, she’s released a handful of great songs. A reissue of Cut 4 Me is about to come out, and she’s just now announced the impending release of a new EP called Hallucinogen. (It features “The High,” an incredible track that she released last year.) She co-wrote “A Message,” the EP’s slow-motion stunner of a single, with Arca, and it shows what these two can do at their absolute best. The song sounds like what might happen if Prince, several thousand years from now, somehow became a sentient cloud. Its new video, from director Daniel Sannwald, is totally mesmerizing. It focuses hard on Kelela’s face, as she cuts off her waist-length dreads and turns into an anime hallucination.