POPSCREEN: CSS

CSS

“Alala”

Dir. Cat Solen

Cute! Hip! Irreverent! Mildly clever! Vaguely obscure! And Brazilian!

That pretty much sums up all of the hype surrounding hipster-in-a-can band CSS, which stands for “Cansei de Ser Sexy.” That’s right—not just tirelessly sexy, but tired of being sexy. And for good reason—their image is so perfectly contrived for the moment that it must be exhausting to keep up. Everything about them just begs for awkward worship from awkward fans. Doll-faced half-Japanese poster-girl singer? Check, and she goes by the name of “Lovefoxxx.” Debut on indie-darling label Sub Pop? Claro que sim. Lyrics with tongue-in-cheek references to Paris Hilton and Death from Above? Obvi. Friends with Diplo, the Svengali behind M.I.A.? That, too.

Considering how tired of being sexy they are, it’s somehow fitting that the video for “Alala” is a bloody gore-fest. It takes a bellicose group of “Pretty in Pink” rejects, throws them a perfectly nice party, and then lets them proceed to tear each others’ faces off. Gold lamé puff-sleeves are ripped to shreds, and corsages go flying. The sexy are made to be distinctly not.

The video is filmed in reverse—the director claims it’s a visual pun on the palindromic song title, but that seems like an ad hoc explanation more artistically palatable than the truth: it looks cool. It opens with shots of hair-pulling and punches, only to turn into a fight abated. Brawlers fly out of swimming pools, piñatas are thrown into trees, and the cake smeared all over poor Lovefoxxx’s face is put back on the serving plate. Wounds are healed and hairdos recoiffed through liberal usage of stop-motion footage. Everyone gets de-uglified.

Even with all of the mangled faces, there’s still something inherently cute, hip, irreverent and mildly clever about the video. The random cuts to a cat with mismatched eyes are more precious than petrifying. The use of split-screen technique evokes “The Brady Bunch,” not “Carrie.” The fact that the whole fight was precipitated by someone tripping over a dog only contributes to the adorable absurdity. It’s all just too darling. I guess CSS can’t stop being sexy no matter how hard they try. It may be tiring work, but someone has to make the hipsters dance.

—Alexandra M. Gutierrez