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Apr 25, 2019 Yumi Zouma By Christopher Roberts

New Zealand indie-pop band Yumi Zouma released a new EP, EP III, last September via Cascine. Now they have shared a video for the EP’s “Crush (It’s Late, Just Stay).” Robbie Barnett directed the video, with editing by Austin Roe. It was filmed in Los Angeles when the band had a day off from touring. Watch it below.

The band issued this statement about the video: “Much of our historical activity as Yumi Zouma has been focused on building an ethereal sensibility for our listeners, based around our own utopian world. However, Robbie Barnett was the first collaborator who encouraged us to incorporate more abstract hyperreality into this collective consciousness. Growing up in New Zealand, the ideas of LA, Hollywood, and celebrity culture are relatively foreign concepts that exist at a touching distance, which serves to heighten the pull of stardom. In a sense, the video serves as a gentle reminder to the band, from ourselves - stop watching videos on YouTube, and finish the next Yumi Zouma record.”

EP III was the follow-up to Yumi Zouma’s sophomore album, Willowbank, which was one of our Top 100 Albums of 2017. Previously they shared the EP’s first single, “In Camera,” which was our #2 Song of the Week. Then they shared another song from it, the wonderfully titled “Crush (It’s Late, Just Stay),” which was also one of our Songs of the Week. Then they shared a video for “In Camera.”

As its title suggests, EP III was the third and final part of a trilogy of EPs that started in 2014. The band issued this previous press release statement about the EP: “There is something really special about the EP format. It’s been so long since we worked on one that we all had forgotten how fun and liberating they can be. This EP, both in its material and how it was written and recorded, feels really close to EP I and II. Spread again between three countries, bouncing endless revisions of a song until it’s right, falling asleep on FaceTime trying to write lyrics together and the exhilaration of waking up to NEW SONG VERSION 5 - it threw us back to how we worked on material when we thought no one would ever listen. We’ve completed our EP family. It’s the little sibling none of us had growing up and none of us knew we could love so much.”

Read our 2017 interview with Yumi Zouma on Willowbank.

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