Seattle trio Virgin of the Birds have premiered a video for Spooky, Stony, Barely Over Thirty, the first single from their upcoming sophomore album, ‘Secret Kids‘. ‘Secret Kids’ will arrive October 14 via Abandoned Love Records in North America, Song, By Toad in the UK/Europe. The video, directed by cinematographer/filmmaker Fred Schroeder, was a collaborative conception with songwriter Jon Rooney. Watch it below via YouTube.
Rooney stated, “My filmmaker friend Fred and I share a love for a certain brand of 60’s/70’s surrealistic European horror like Mario Bava, Jean Rollin, and Dario Argento, as well as feverish horror comic books from that same era like, Werewolf by Night, Adventures into Fear, and Vampire Tales. I sent him the song and he just ran with it.” Schroeder added, “The video was inspired by the nostalgic visions and atmosphere conjured up by Virgin of the Birds’ music. It’s somewhere lost between the pages of a horror comic and a forgotten Mario Bava film.”
Led by songwriter Jon Rooney, Virgin of the Birds started as a bedroom recording project in the mid-00s, in San Francisco, surfacing as a full band in Austin, before settling in Seattle. After self-releasing a series of homespun EPs via his own Abandoned Love Records, Rooney caught the ear of the Scottish blog/label Song, By Toad who released Virgin of the Bird’s debut full-length, ‘Winter Seeds,’ in 2014. Rooney cites the Velvet Underground’s third record, the Verlaines and Lilys as references, and has been compared to Felt, Bill Callahan and David Berman, with his verbose verbiage and mining of obscure pop culture references throughout his songs, and the album’s title, which gives a nod to late ’70s Philadelphia folk-rock saviors Kenn Kweder and his Secret Kidds.
While Virgin of the Birds performed through the years in San Francisco, Austin, the Pacific Northwest and Scotland, Rooney with drummer/producer Colin J Nelson and bassist Ken Nottingham completed their first ever tour of the West Coast this past spring. They will celebrate the release of ‘Secret Kids’ in Seattle on October 22, before heading to the UK late November. More dates will be announced in the coming weeks.
Seattle trio Virgin of the Birds have premiered a video for Spooky, Stony, Barely Over Thirty, the first single from their upcoming sophomore album, ‘Secret Kids‘. ‘Secret Kids’ will arrive October 14 via Abandoned Love Records in North America, Song, By Toad in the UK/Europe. The video, directed by cinematographer/filmmaker Fred Schroeder, was a collaborative conception with songwriter Jon Rooney. Watch it below via YouTube. 