“Infectious riffs…pop chops” - Rolling Stone
“…unstoppable pop-rock hooks” - Billboard
“Music’s best kept secret” - Chicago Sun-Times
Los Angeles indie rock band Nico Vega has partnered with filmmaker Mark Pellington to create the riveting video for the band’s “Wasted On The Young,” out today.
WATCH “WASTED ON THE YOUNG”
The video, shot mostly in richly textured black and white, features elderly people from Miami of different races and sexes, musing on subjects including family, early life, and their impending demise, inter-spliced with a performance from the band. Pellington, who has worked with the likes of REM, Leonard Cohen, the Flaming Lips, Public Enemy, De La Soul, and whose video for “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam’s earned 4 MTV Music Video Awards and is one of the most viewed videos of all time says of his collaboration with the band:
"Nico Vega’s a special band and this is a special song. What we tried to create in this piece is a visual essay, exploring mortality, age, and the relationship between youth and the inevitable. A performance-driven video featuring blistering sonics and Aja [leadsinger Volkman], an incredible visceral performance surrounding portraiture, memories, and perspectives from lived lives. Real people experience their lives, their memories with glitches, and AI rendering of possibilities. Technology overwhelms us and can create images, unlike anything we’ve ever seen before … we were all young and hopefully we’ll all get old. It’s different for everyone and the video explorers and beautiful deep rich photography. The human soul, the human face the vulnerability of time and youth is wasted on the young."
The band’s lead singer Aja Volkman said about working with Pellington:
“He has an extremely strong perspective and is hands down one of the most intense humans you will ever meet. Mark has a unique ability to access his darkness and his light equally. And you can feel this complexity in his work."
Dan Epand, the band’s drummer adds:
"And this is someone who has made some of the greatest music videos in music video history. He is a real part of the culture and history of music videos and in an era where art is whittled down to ‘content’, and the strategy for success is to flood the internet with ‘stuff’, it becomes easy to lose sight of the artistry and that we are trying to make things that are great and will stand the test of time. That is exactly what Mark is after, that is the game he's playing."
In addition, the band has made a mini-documentary featuring the band and director Pellington. The video can be watched here.
Volk also talks about the origins of “Wasted On The Young,”
"We wrote the song right after my stepfather had a severe health diagnosis. He had carotid arteries and was at risk of having a heart attack at any time. I remember looking at him and thinking how we really are forced to live with the choices we make in this life. It’s that old concept: “I wish I knew what I know now when I was younger”. The idea of wishing you could have another shot, but with the added perspective of experience. And then what would you do with it? But that is the beauty of life; that you just can't go back!
“Wasted On The Young” is from the band’s Make It Out Alive EP which features Nico Vega’s first recording since original band member Michael Peña returned to the fold alongside singer Aja Volkman, guitarist Rich Koehler, and drummer Dan Epand. Peña, whose mother the band is named after, was the original drummer, but left early in the band’s history due to the demands of a burgeoning acting career which would see him get roles in movies such as End Of Watch, Narcos: Mexico, Crash, and Ant-Man. Peña currently plays bass with the band, which was his original instrument. | 
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