MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW

 Halsey is one of those girls. 
You know the ones: They can 
rock the mystical shoulder 
tattoos, 
the Smurf-
blue hair, 
the elusive 
ultra-pixie 
cut, the 
oversized 
band 
T-shirts 
— and 
still look 
completely 
irresistible.
 The thing is, though, 
Halsey’s music is too 
intelligent, too edgy to 
be pigeonholed into that 
basic category of “hipster.” 

Perhaps this stereotyping 
is what she and her clan 
are rebelling against in 
the post-apocalyptic “New 
Americana” video. It’s 
intense, and for the most part, 
convincingly so.
 As our leading lady is 
chilling with her heathens in 
an underground layer, doing 
push-ups and smoking and 
kissing people aggressively 
(typical), she’s captured by 
some fascist dude with a 
really big gun. He drags her 
through the rainforest, ties 
her to a tree and douses her 
in gasoline: apt preparations 
for hipster homicide. Alas, 
Halsey won’t settle for that — 
eccentricity will not be stifled 

ASTRALWERKS

C+

New 
Americana

Halsey

Astralwerks

— and in comes La Resistance 
to save the fire-lit night.

 All of this is effective in 
eliciting true fear for the 
singer — one simply must 
watch until the end to 
find out what goes down. 
“New Americana” is the 
perfect backing song for 

the cinematography, too, as 
both the video and music 
extract from each other equal 
amounts of raw, penetrating 
power.
 But as the good-looking 
group is sprinting to safety 
at the end, one can’t help 
but think of the typicality 
of it all. The video straight 
up looks like it’s from “The 
Hunger Games” if Urban 
Outfitters had been the 
executive producer. In a 
time where sexy sci-fi tales 
of young-adult upheaval are 
more than overdone, Halsey’s 
originality is best suited to a 
far less clichéd format.

- MELINA GLUSAC

Too intelligent 
and edgy to be 

a hipster.

4B — Thursday, October 1, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

