London-based singer-songwriter and model Rina Sawayama is exhausted. On her new single "Tunnel Vision"—watch the video exclusively below—she's constantly caught between checking her notifications and trying to care about what you're saying IRL, and she manages to capture that mental in-betweenness in the form of twinkling R&B.
"I was in the studio and kept getting distracted by emails, Facebook messages, Instagram," Rina told The FADER, over email (of course). "Just generally being a bit rude TBH. I felt this pressure to be on call 24/7 by different people, totally losing my sense of self—something that I'm sure everyone can relate to. Justin played this incredible piano riff, and the lyrics You tell me what's wrong with you but I don't really care just flowed out; from there the whole song took less than an hour to write and record. Everything came out so honestly and rather than turning it into a traditional song structure I decided to keep it short, like it was a rant.
"Arvida [Byström, video director] and I had met at a couple of shoots (we're both with the same model agency) and had got on really well, so when I showed her the track and she said she wanted to make a video for it I was so happy as I'm such a huge fan of her work. The video came out exactly like I imagined, like a pastel R&B glitter struggle."
