Mitski’s Video For ‘A Pearl’ Is A Stunningly Animated Tumble Into The Unknown

Mitski has shared a gorgeous new video for her song “A Pearl.” A standout from her latest album, Be The Cowboy, “A Pearl” uses a grungy guitar riff and pitch-black lyrics to explore lingering trauma and feeling like you don’t deserve love.

Mitski’s visuals for the song are just as striking as the track itself. A collaboration with Art Camp and animator-directors Saad Moosajee and Danae Gosset, “A Pearl” is a drawing come to life. Rather than clean, blocky computer generated art, the video looks like traditional colored pencil or chalk pastel, fluid and undeniably human. The woman in the video begins walking alone on a deserted landscape, but is torn from the ground as she enters (and whirls through) a house and its various rooms. She is thrown around the sky and ocean, losing the control she had at the beginning of the video, until she falls into the water, where she can finally walk free again.

The animation in the video is seriously beautiful. Every still from the video is immaculately composed, and the animation allows gorgeous, unusual color combinations that make the video even more striking. (The ocean is streaked with hot pink.) The visuals for “A Pearl” are fittingly stunning to match one of the standout tracks from Be The Cowboy.

Watch the video for “A Pearl” above.