Brockhampton – “No Halo” Video

Tonight at midnight, the much-loved West Coast rap “boy band” Brockhampton will release their new album Ginger, The follow-up to last year’s Iridescence. For the past few weeks, they’ve released a new single, with an accompanying low-budget video, every Thursday morning. The first three those songs — “I Been Born Again,” “If You Pray Right,” “Boy Bye” — have all captured some the chaotic, unstable energy that the group brought when they first showed up on our collective radar a couple years ago. Today, in what’s presumably their final drop before the album arrives, they’ve gone a different direction.

“No Halo,” the opening track from Ginger, turns out to be a melodic and introspective songs, one built on the sound fluttery acoustic guitars. The Brockhampton members do as much singing — or at least as much sing-rapping — as they do straight-up rapping. It’s a song about depression, with different members the group getting into matters religion and substance abuse. Deb Never, a Seattle-born and Los Angeles-based lo-fi singer-songwriter signed to Shlohmo’s WEDIDIT label, single the hook along with Matt Champion and Merlyn Wood. It’s her first time appearing on a Brockhampton song.

The video comes from director Spencer Ford, who seems to be Brockhampton’s primary visual collaborator this time around. It involves sailboats, owls, space blankets, churches, and shiny suits, and it’s got the same grainy slapdash energy as the other recent Brockhampton videos. Check it out below.

Ginger is out tonight on Question Everything/RCA Records.