It’s become of a bit of a film studies student cliché to talk about how the city is a character in a given piece. But go on and let it slide for The xx’s “I Dare You,” a sun-baked clip full of young Hollywood stars that the band explicitly called “a love letter to Los Angeles.”
The band clearly fell for the city when they recorded parts of their new album I See You there. And the video from Alasdair McLellan conveys that by capturing the city in loving detail. The video — which was partially helmed by Calvin Klein’s Raf Simons, follows a group of kids as they play hooky from school and drive around the city. Simons involvement and the LA setting leads to some famous faces being thrown in among the cloudless shots of palm trees and highways. Along the way the video features appearances from Paris Jackson, Stranger Things‘ Millie Bobby Brown and Moonlight‘s Ashton Saunders.
The new video is not the first time that the xx have used their videos to say something loving about a place that they care for. Their first video from the new album was a tribute to their childhood stomping grounds in London. Give their latest tribute a watch up top.
