HTRK return with a brand new video for their track “You Know How to Make Me Happy” off the upcoming LP Venus in Leo due out on August 30th via Ghostly International. Featuring the duo of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang, the pair’s fourth long-player is their first since 2014’s Psychic 9-5 Club. Recorded at their home studio in the Dandenong Ranges outside of Melbourne, the album features HTRK’s trademark combinations of space and intimacy while returning them closer to their underground rock past.
While Psychic 9-5 Club found Standish and Yang searching for a “healthy dose of inner peace,” the record’s spectral vibe and cool detachment highlighted the degree to which this might have been a “life or death” search to find salubrious grounding. On the duo’s new single, “You Know How to Make Me Happy,” it seems they’ve found a modicum of that tranquility, but the cut’s woozy sense of contentment suggests just how precarious this calm might be.
The video for the track is directed by Antuong Nguyen and it stars both Standish and Yang. A physical distance divides the pair as they each hang glow in the dark stars on their respective bedroom walls. Joined in this communal act, but separated by space, the director creates a sense of their intimate connection while revealing just how fragile this bond might be. Much like Nguyen’s video for “You Know How to Make Me Happy,” HTRK’s music chronicles the search for human intimacy, while revealing the existential crises at the core of this quest.
