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The Dodos: Showing 'Confidence' In A Video's Surprising Sequel

Lots of bands play bright, winsome folk-pop, but only one has the bold, sure drumming of The Dodos' Logan Kroeber; he infuses the duo's prettily propulsive songs with momentum and force. Four albums into The Dodos' career, the group is still making terrific records like the new Carrier — a tremendous sleeper for those who've been seeking a Blind Pilot-style left-field gem in 2013.

Carrier's best track, "Confidence," functions as two songs in one: There's a charming, little mid-tempo ballad, and then there's a fierce, clamoring rocker that builds and builds. The new accompanying video does some building of its own: It functions as a sequel to the video for "Companions," a song from The Dodos' 2011 album No Color. Both feature a mysterious, possibly sinister drifter.

"The plot for the 'Confidence' video continues the story of this drifter character we created for the 'Companions' video, played by our friend Bo," the band recently wrote us in an email. "He's one of the funniest dudes we know, and when the director, Nate, came at us with a chase-themed concept for 'Confidence,' we realized it could be a perfect opportunity to get Bo on camera again. While his character in 'Companions' was in total control of his situation, in 'Confidence' it's fun to see the tables turn on him. And, since we've come this far, we left the ending on a cliffhanger to create room for a third installment down the line. It's pretty rad to have a continuing story to tell with our videos. At this point, we're Aerosmith and Bo is our Liv Tyler."

"This is my first music video after working mostly with live music," video director Nate Chan writes. "In terms of inspiration for the video, I've recently been reading and watching a lot of Andrei Tarkovsky and Pedro Costa films, and I wanted to see what it was like to work with rhythm and space within the frame, especially in the context of musical and lyrical rhythm. I was curious to know if it was possible to take a studio recording of a song from months ago and align it with images that were somewhat arbitrary, but connect because of the intention the video would serve. I wanted to see if the two mediums would find each other's rhythm; hopefully, that was realized. It was also an idea to keep the canvas clean, allowing the two characters to tell their story through movement and expression without having to complicate it. It kind of ends ambiguously, but I like to think he's free at that present moment — that's all that matters."

"Confidence" appears on The Dodos' new album, Carrier.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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