• News

• All

Dec 02, 2021 By Joey Arnone Photography by Alex Cantouris

North London trio Girl Ray have shared a video for their new cover of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 song “Murder on the Dancefloor.” All proceeds from the cover will go toward supporting the Hackney Night Shelter. The Poppy Hankin-directed video depicts the trio as office workers at a Christmas party. Watch below.

Girl Ray state in a press release: “‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ has always had a special place in our hearts—it was forever etched into our memory when a few years back at a post-show karaoke session in Bristol, I over-excitedly shoved the microphone to Iris’ lips when it was finally our turn to sing, chipping her front tooth in half for the remainder of the tour. Since then it has of course remained our karaoke song, and a favorite at our DJ sets. When we were looking for a song to cover for this year’s festival seasons, it seemed a natural fit. It became one of our favorite parts of our live set, and we thought it would be only right to record it in honor of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s truly perfect pop song.”

They add, regarding the video: “We’ve always wanted to work together in an office; I think we’re secretly middle-aged office workers at heart. None of us have been to an office party but they sound really fun so we decided to recreate one for our video. It felt like ‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ is the sort of song that would go down really well at an office party. Poppy seemed really excited about her new gimbal she’d bought for her iPhone, so we decided to let her film, direct, and edit the whole video. We couldn’t find any actual offices to make the video in, so Moshi Moshi reluctantly let us use their work space for it. Hopefully after they see the video they’ll take us on full time.”

In May, the trio shared the song “Give Me Your Love,” which was produced by Joe Goddard and Al Doyle from Hot Chip and was one of our Songs of the Week. Their most recent album, Girl, came out in 2019 via Moshi Moshi.

In 2020 we posted a mini-documentary on Girl Ray, where we visited their home studio. Watch the James Loveday-directed film here.

Also read our My Firsts interview with the band from 2019.

Girl was the follow-up to their 2017-released debut album, Earl Grey (it was our Album of the Week and #3 on our Top 15 Debut Albums of 2017 list).

Read our Pleased to Meet You interview with Girl Ray and check out our exclusive photo shoot with the band.

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.