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Apr 12, 2022 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Ben Crabb

Last year, Bristol-based indie outfit Make Friends debuted their latest EP, Is This Real. Since debuting in 2019, the band have been honing a style built on layered songwriting and infectious indie melodies, pulling from 2010s indie dance punk touchstones like Foals or Bombay Bicycle Club. Their latest EP was their sharpest combination yet, with production courtesy of Pete Sené of Everything Everything.

Later this year the band are set to return with new music, but today they’re keeping the momentum up with a video for one of the EP’s highlights, “Fever,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Fever” is a suitably feverish effort from the band, with plenty of chorus-drenched guitars, bass grooves, and relentlessly catchy melodies. The band marries this innate infectiousness with an element of jittery paranoia, creating a dark underlying glow to the track’s indie pop sheen. Originally inspired by the simmering fears that followed the lifting of pandemic lockdowns, the new video reframes the track’s paranoia into a story of infidelity, anxiety, and dissociation.

Speaking about the new video, the band said, “The visual for ‘Fever’ takes a slightly different perspective to the song’s original meaning, and centres on the pitfalls of paranoia and dissociation, sometimes exacerbated by the kaleidoscope of a real-life fever. We wanted the video to be left open to interpretation, so we’re excited to see what people make of it!”

While director Ben Crabb added, “I’m a London based director who has shot promos and commercials for artists such as Prince, Elton John, Gregory Porter, Liam Gallagher & Michael Bublé. The idea for the music video actually stemmed from my brother Connor (guitarist) who put forward a concept based around the feeling that arose from relationships in lockdowns. I went on to develop that idea in a visual sense, with themes of repetition and a distorted view on reality, all tying into the claustrophobic ‘fever’ state some of us have experienced over the past few years.”

Check out the song and video below. Is This Real is out everywhere now.