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Music

Skrillex Links Up with the Video Industry's Best on Ambitious New Visuals for "Red Lips"

Created with people who worked on 'The Hunger Games,' 'Avatar,' and 'Ex Machina,'—"Red Lips" took six whole months to make.
Grant Singer

It feels like every year is a big year for Skrillex, but 2015 might just be one of his biggest yet. His Jack Ü single with Diplo and Justin Bieber "Where Are Ü Now" is as catchy as it is inescapable, recently winning Best Collaboration at the AMAs; he produced six tracks for the new Bieber album Purpose; and he also made new strides in the hip-hop world, producing tracks for the likes of Vic Mensa, The Game, and Big Grams.

Now, he's come out with his biggest video production to date, for his remix of Miami duo GTA's "Red Lips." The clip took six whole months to make, and features a gold-standard industry crew with credits ranging from Avatar (VFX by James Alexander) to Ex Machina (Director of Photography Rob Hardy) to The Hunger Games (Costume Designer Trish Sommerville.) It was directed by Grant Singer, known for his work on videos like The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face", Vic Mensa & Kanye West's "U Mad", and Skrillex & Yogi's "Burial", and was co-written by him and Skrillex.

"Red Lips" is a dark, sci-fi adventure, as intense as it is bizarre. Skrillex describes it in his own words in an interview with Pitchfork: "The first thing that went through my head when I heard the song is that it starts out kind of pretty, but still dark," he explains. "It feels almost schizophrenic. The way Sam Bruno, the vocalist, delivers the song, it feels like she's afraid of something. The idea was, what if this girl was sitting here by herself, and when the key changes in the song, the sky just went black and these creatures come out from behind and it's this nightmare she's running from? It's this girl in your head, and this is what she's seeing."

Check out the clip above, and read the rest of the interview here.

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