DEBBY FRIDAY — Lipsync

JUL 01 2025 · 12:00

DEBBY FRIDAY — Lipsync (2025) Director: Kevan Funk (co-directed with Debby Friday) Era: Post-Internet Electro-Rap / Mid-2020s Avant-Club (2025) - Hyperpop-adjacent electronic rap emerging from Canada's Sub Pop-affiliated underground, bridging industrial club textures with confessional pop aesthetics A high-value document of the 2025 Canadian avant-club moment, Lipsync merges institutional credibility (Sub Pop, Massey Hall, Polaris Prize pedigree) with radical formal compression — 304 cuts, 30-minute production, fire-lit single-location staging. The co-directorial credit shared between Debby Friday and Kevan Funk makes it a rare example of fully artist-owned visual identity within a major indie label context. Essential for archives covering 2020s Black experimental pop and the evolution of music video as DIY art form. Context: Released June 12, 2025, as a single from Debby Friday's sophomore album The Starrr Of The Queen Of Life (Sub Pop / Royal Mountain Records, August 1, 2025), Lipsync arrives in the wake of Friday's Polaris Music Prize win for her 2023 debut Good Luck. The video reflects a wider 2020s movement of Black and diasporic artists using the Canadian indie infrastructure (Sub Pop deals, TIFF-adjacent filmmakers) to produce confrontational, genre-collapsing music that straddles electro-rap, hyperpop, and industrial club. The choice of Massey Hall — a storied Toronto cultural venue — as a guerrilla 30-minute shoot location positions the work at the intersection of institutional prestige and radical DIY methodology. Director notes: Lipsync was co-directed by Kevan Funk and Debby Friday, with Friday also serving as editor and titles designer. Shady Hanna handled cinematography and Maya Gelfand produced. Per multiple press sources, the entire video was shot in approximately 30 minutes at Toronto's historic Massey Hall. The production is described with an 'iron forged in fire' thematic. This is part of an ongoing creative collaboration between Funk and Friday, who have co-directed multiple videos together across her Sub Pop releases.