Frankie Cosmos — Bitch Heart

JUL 01 2025 · 12:00

Frankie Cosmos — Bitch Heart (2025) Director: Eliza Lu Doyle Era: Post-Pandemic Indie Revival (2024–2025) - NYC indie-rock four-piece era; DIY bedroom-pop roots evolving into fully self-produced band identity on Sub Pop Records High. A rare example of a commercially released music video in which a credentialed fine-art video practitioner (MFA, BRIClab resident, exhibited at Anthology Film Archives) deploys institutional-grade conceptual methods — infrared and thermal dual-camera dark-field imaging — within a Sub Pop-backed indie-rock promotional context. Merits preservation as a document of the 2025 indie aesthetic and of art-world/music-industry crossover practice. Context: Released May 7, 2025 as the second single from Frankie Cosmos's sixth album 'Different Talking' (Sub Pop, June 27, 2025), 'Bitch Heart' arrives at a moment when indie-rock bands are grappling publicly with digital alienation and the erosion of pre-smartphone selfhood. The video's infrared/thermal photography literalizes this anxiety: human bodies rendered as heat signatures, stripped of social-media-legible appearance. The band's self-production of the album — their first without external producers — mirrors the video's DIY-meets-fine-art ethos. Director Eliza Lu Doyle brings an MFA art-world sensibility to the format, embedding conceptual installation logic within the constraints of a 2.5-minute single. Director notes: Doyle conceived the video around the song's central tension between domesticated comfort and primal wildness. She cast Greta Kline as a dog-shepherd figure straddling those two realms, while the band performs a line dance described as 'constrained and exuberant at once.' The entire video was shot in darkness using both infrared and thermal cameras, producing a spectral, 'not-quite-real' visual register. This approach reflects Doyle's fine-art background in video and performance, applying gallery-grade conceptual rigor to a commercial music video format. The production aligns with the album's thematic preoccupation with phone addiction, embodied presence, and feral selfhood.