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Apr 15, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Maria Quintana

Grunge punk duo Tarah Who? have returned, sharing the video for their newest single, “Illusion of Freedom,” premiering with Under the Radar. Featuring frontwoman Tarah Carpenter’s soaring talents on vocals and guitar and Coralie Hervé thunderous drumming, the pair form a rousing power duo, putting a muscular anthemic spin on the sounds of grunge and alt rock. The band last shared their 2020 EP 64 Women, named in tribute to 64 women who were detained in an immigration detention center in downtown LA on November 19, 2014, along with Tarah herself.

The band’s newest single, “Illusion of Freedom” deals with similar themes of immigration, stomping through the band’s latest high-octane examination of injustice. The pair are strident and uncompromising, taking on dividing political boundaries and hierarchies of power amidst a ripping alt rock pace and roaring instrumentation. The band’s message is simple and direct: “Can’t chose your place of birth/And it doesn’t change your basic worth.” The band’s accompanying video reimagines the titular “illusion of freedom” as a small-scale rodeo chase, featuring Coralie fleeing from a horsebound rider.

The band says of the video, “With the pandemic, we were trying to make this video as simple as possible. ‘Illusion of Freedom’ is about the political boundaries that divide us as humans and cultures. Even though this is what the song is about, we didn’t want to make any political statement so we wanted to give enough room for interpretation from the viewer. My friend Kacey is a professional rodeo girl and I thought it would be cool to feature her, especially because there isn’t really a place for women in roping. All of our videos are shot in Los Angeles so we thought that we would change it a bit and made it all the way to Oklahoma in order to get a real country feel. Coralie is acting as the main character, running away from… well in this case Kacey but really she is running for her freedom, and I have managed to escape. Although we only know this at the end.” Check out the video below.