Some bands make songs; half•alive make small movies you can hum. The Long Beach indie-pop trio has just rolled out its new EP — the tracks Billions, The Wolf and The Wonder — not as three separate clips but as one continuous, surreal triptych of a video, and it has already set comment sections buzzing.
The piece opens on an odd note: four office workers shuffling through a mundane workspace while an old-school "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" intro plays, deliberately out of sync with what you're seeing. Give it a few seconds and it slides smoothly into the driving rhythms of Billions, where the real show begins. The choreography — tight, angular, almost mechanical in the office scenes — has drawn comparisons to everything from the TV series Severance to the work of French choreographer Philippe Decouflé. Sharp suits, synchronized movement and a healthy dose of the absurd: think corporate life staged as contemporary dance.
The visuals don't stay in the office. Across the three songs the video shifts mood and setting, with dramatic lighting that one viewer likened to Caravaggio paintings — all deep shadow and single-source glow. There's even a cheeky mid-song ad break that somehow plays as part of the performance rather than interrupting it. The whole thing was directed and produced by Josh Taylor and Courtney Coker, with choreography by JA Collective, and performed by Anthony Dessables, Avery Jerome, J Tyler Johnson and Josh Taylor himself.
Fan reactions tell the story as much as the video does. YouTube commenters have joked that the routines must have cost "several childhood core memories" to learn, and long-time listeners keep arriving at the same verdict: half•alive are as much a visual outfit as a musical one. Newcomers, meanwhile, are stumbling onto the band for the first time through this release — which is arguably the point. The group built its reputation on videos where choreography does the storytelling, and this EP release doubles down on that identity without repeating itself.
Is this travel content? Not exactly — but it is a reminder of why music video culture makes cities like Los Angeles worth paying attention to. The kind of creative crew behind this project — directors, choreographers, dance collectives — clusters around LA's film and music scene, and for culture-hungry travellers the city's live venues, soundstages tours and street-level dance scene are a genuine draw. If a band can turn a day at the office into three minutes of art, imagine what their hometown does on a Saturday night.
For everyone else, the takeaway is simple: put the headphones on, but don't close the tab. half•alive are a band you watch as much as hear, and this triptych — experimental yet weirdly mainstream-friendly — is one of the more enjoyable ways to spend fifteen minutes online this week.
First covered by Kuriositas.