Washington, D.C.’s band Flasher couldn’t decide what style to use for their video for the song “Material,” so they used all of them.
Washington, D.C.’s Flasher put out one of 2018’s best debuts this summer with Constant Image. New single “Material” is among the smartest, catchiest songs on the record, and now it has a video to match.
The video is a post-modern, late-capitalist deconstruction of Internet culture, and its surreal humor sheds a light on just how pervasive and crazy that culture has become. Twenty seconds in, they purposely freeze the video—spinning onscreen circle, cursor, groans and all—before clicking onto a fake lyric video of the song and resuming the tune.
What follows is a series of absurd Internet parodies of the band performing the track—an a cappella version, an instructional dance video, a cringeworthy karaoke version and a behind-the-scenes clip. They even make a satirical advertisement for socks so high they can’t fall down and a fake conspiracy theory video that accuses the band of having Illuminati ties.
The video closes with the band being devoured by a devil-like creature—perhaps a reference to the real-life, often ignored ramifications of constant entertainment, connection and sensory overload.
