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Indie Pop and Krumping Collide in a Music Video Documentary

A new music video for LA indie trailblazers The Great Escape is a surprising mini-doc on the street dance genre.

Indie pop and aggressively energetic street dancing aren't typically lumped together with one another, but that didn't stop LA-based alt pop trailblazers The Great Escape from creating a krumping music video for their single "Let Me Go Wild." Presented in the form of a four-minute mini documentary, the video presents an overview of the Los Angeles krump scene explained by some of the movement's most prominent figure and dancers.

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The opening sequence introduces the viewer to Marquisa Gardner, better known as Miss Prissy or The Queen of Krump. As she walks into an empty ballroom, Miss Prissy gives a cursory tale of the horrible violence she witnessed while growing up, with intermittent cuts to a dark LA cityscape. Suddenly she asks, "What do you do? Where do you take all of that you are seeing?" The answer, "You take it to the dance floor."

Band members of The Great Escape

As the short doc goes on, more characters share their own personal anecdotes regarding why they got into krumping and what the dance movement represents and does for them, while vibrant dancing shots flutter in and out at a pace frenetic as the dance itself. Throughout these lively shots, the magnificent voice of The Great Escape's Ingrid Andersson repeatedly chants out "Let me go wi-i-i-i-i-ld!"

The energy of krumping and "Let Me Go Wild" complement one another surprisingly well, despite originating from different ends of the musical spectrum. This duality was a prime motivating factor behind the music video doc. "We've been trying to pair our songs with topics that aren't the first ones that come to mind," band member Malte Hagemeister tells Creators. "So much in the music video world has been done already, so we find it way more interesting to experiment with new combinations, something unexpected, something that sticks out!"

The title of the song, which accurately reflects the spirit of the tune, needed an adequate visual partner in the music video: "We knew it had to be an energetic topic, something to go along with the phrase 'Let Me go Wild'. We had been toying with the idea of somehow making the video about the power of dance, and then me and the music video's director Mischa Meyer stumbled into a premiere of another Krump documentary and I thought: This might work!" Hagemesiter adds.

The match turned out to be made in heaven: "Krump is such a powerful and expressive dance, and our song lyrically is all about radical self-expression. The longer time we spent with them, the more excited we got, because their personal life stories are powerful examples of how self-expression is necessary for transformation and growth," he reveals. "The fact that Krumping isn't usually done on funky 60s beats made it even more appealing to us, but honestly we didn't know if it was going to work until we started with the edit. We took a risk, and I guess it worked!"

Let Me Go Wild single artwork, The Great Escape

You can check out the music video for Let Me Go Wild, as well as The Great Escape's other thoroughly unique music videos on their YouTube page, here.

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