Jesse Jo Stark Goes ‘Blair Witch’ in New Video For ‘Modern Love’

Jesse Jo Stark, rock’s newest creature of the night, shows off her backstage world the way only a true horror-movie junkie would: Blair Witch-style. In her new video for “Modern Love,” Stark writhes and wriggles at a shaky camera, sometimes on the floor, sometimes in pitch black. Her layered growls hang over a driving thrum of guitar and drums. 

Stark said the inspiration for “Modern Love” came from observing social interactions in the world around her. “Something in my guts told me we’ve crept away from the pure love I have always wanted,” she said in a press statement. “People making friends as accessories, climbing people like ladders. It made me feel like a stranger in my own body.” The music video is a stripped-down version of the signature maximalism fans might be coming to expect from Stark. It features busy lighting, sparkly outfits, and eclectic footage layered over top of itself, but with the singer front and center.

“Modern Love” offers another glimpse of what’s to come on Stark’s full-length debut album, DOOMED, which is out September 21. “The album touches on the duality of life like love and pain, lightness and darkness, glamor and horror,” said Stark. “I don’t think we are all just one thing, and so for this, I offer all of me.”

The song follows the release earlier this year of “So Bad,” also off the upcoming album. The music video for “So Bad” centered around a Pulp Fiction-esque tale of revenge and co-starred The Neighbourhood’s Jesse Rutherford. Rutherford co-produced DOOMED, which will uncover some of Stark’s most private experiences.

Stark has opened for Jane’s Addiction and Guns N’ Roses, but the October DOOMED tour will mark her first headlining shows.

Stark draws inspiration from a hodgepodge of Americana, punk and fashion design. The daughter of clothing brand Chrome Hearts Richard Stark and Laurie Lynn, she has created custom pieces for artists like Orville Peck and boyfriend Yungblud. She now runs her own merch company, Deadly Doll. Last year, she starred in a five-part episodic drama Fracture by French fashion house Balmain and Channel 4. Stark scored all music for the project, a collection of four songs from her EP, A Pretty Place to Fall Apart.