Kim Petras is one of those new pop voices you’ll start to see cropping up everywhere this year. In early January she guested on Charli XCX’s fantastic Pop 2 record, and today she’s back with the video for “Heart To Break,” which Uproxx is premiering. In the vein of emerging millennial pop stars like Dua Lipa, Petras is interested in questioning romantic expectations and doing the subversive, unexpected work within an earworm, sparkly pop song that almost masks the rebellion.
In the crystal-laden video, Petras slowly but surely works through an encounter with her love interest that ends up with him and her all alone on a bench in a secluded bedroom — where she turns into crystal and breaks into a million pieces. Or, in the alternate version, stays wholly intact and engages in a steamy makeout session that spills over into a full-on dance party elsewhere in the clip. When a zoom-out at the end reveals that the whole world can crack as easily as a crystal, it puts the whole video into perspective.
For her part, Kim had a clear vision of what she wanted in the video, explaining:
“I think music videos are kind of where it all comes together. When I finish a song I always have an image in my mind of colors, outfits, setting, or a storyline — I always have something attached to a song visually when I write it just because it comes from real experiences. All of it is kind of an extension of the real version of myself.
I like to do videos that are in an alternate universe, not at all attached to reality — this one is in a weird crystal castle. I reference escapism a lot, in all of my music, so I like to create tiny worlds with my music videos that still have a lot of myself in it — like including my real friends in it who I hang out with and play video games with. I express myself a lot through fashion too — style kind of dictates my mood. With this video, if I was a princess, this is how I would dress.
For this video, we spun a whole story around shattering into glass if I fall in love and being scared of that. So I’m sitting on a bed in the beginning that says ‘fragile’ in my crystal tower wanting to fall in love but being afraid to. It’s a really bubbly, colorful pop music video. I feel like this video has been a super cool group effort. It was really fun to do and I’m really excited for people to see it.”
Watch the clip above for the song which has already reached 5 millon plays on Spotify, and look for more from Kim in the very near future.
