Hælos - “Separate Lives” (Official Video)

British trio Hælos make wonderfully dissonant melancholy dance music. They use bright, bouncy, glimmering sounds that collide with evocative lyrics that veer gloomy to create a splendid tension. Their debut album, Full Circle, is due out later this month. It puts their comfort with discordance on display with a euphoric mood winning out on tracks like “Oracle,” “Pray,” and “The Sun Rising.”

Today, the band shares the track “Separate Lives” with accompanying visuals. The song has bright, shimmery synths and intricate drum work that oddly accentuates gloomy lyrics. The band had this to say about it: “It’s a reflection on the moment when you are choosing between staying or leaving and the underlying love that keeps you there. We liked that, it was simple and human and something we could all share experience in.”

The matching clip encompasses the conflicting emotions in the music as the band wanders through Hollywood, navigates traffic on LA freeways, and gets glimpses of Seattle on the West Coast leg of their last tour. The ambivalence of the song and the incongruity of the album is simply elicited in the video as the band meanders through unfamiliar spaces with an easy camaraderie binding them.