Frankie Cosmos — Vanity

JUL 01 2025 · 12:00

Frankie Cosmos — Vanity (2025) Director: Greta Kline Era: Indie Web Native Era (2025) - Post-pandemic DIY self-production wave; artist-directed documentary aesthetics displace high-budget video production as authenticity marker in indie rock High curatorial value as a document of the 2025 indie rock DIY visual mode — the video is an artifact of an artist deliberately collapsing the boundary between process and product. Its rejection of external production infrastructure in favor of band-filmed footage is historically legible as part of a long arc from punk zine culture through Bandcamp aesthetics. Represents a meaningful data point for research into how artists on legacy indie labels maintain an anti-spectacle visual identity. Context: Released April 2025 as the lead single for Frankie Cosmos' sixth album Different Talking (Sub Pop, June 2025), 'Vanity' arrives during a broader indie rock moment defined by radical self-sufficiency. The album was self-tracked by the band with no external producers — a deliberate rejection of industry infrastructure. The music video extends this ethos: filmed on-site during recording sessions, it offers access over artifice. The warm, low-lit footage stands in direct contrast to the high-production-value lyric video or choreographed performance clip that dominates the algorithmic streaming era, aligning instead with a lineage of artist-as-archivist video making that traces back through early YouTube and Bandcamp culture. Director notes: Kline self-directed the 'Vanity' official video. Multiple sources confirm the footage was filmed by Kline and her bandmate Alex Bailey during the recording sessions for the album Different Talking. The video functions as a behind-the-scenes document of the album's creation, consistent with the band's self-produced ethos — Different Talking was the first Frankie Cosmos album tracked entirely by the band with no external studio producers.