Blood Orange: I'm Sorry We Lied

Night riding motorcycle lover Blood Orange, AKA Devonté Hynes, succumbs to a femme fatale in director Abteen Bagheri's pop promo for "I'm Sorry We Lied." First surfacing in UK dance-punk trio Test Icicles, the Essex-raised Hynes moved to New York five years ago and garnered critical acclaim for his alt-folk Lightspeed Champion solo project. While writing and producing for the likes of Florence Welch and Solange Knowles, Hynes pieced together the distinctive retro-infused R&B of Blood Orange, releasing the Coastal Grooves album last summer. "I'm obsessed with the obsession with the 50s and 60s that people had in the 80s," explains Hynes. "Grease, Billy Idol, Happy Days. It might have been the last time people were cool." Having worked previously on the video for breakout Harlem rapper ASAP Rocky's "Peso," Bagheri shot "I'm Sorry We Lied" over two days along the one-mile Main Street strip of the small desert town of Barstow, California. The young filmmaker drew inspiration from classic 80s noirs like Near Dark, The Wraith, and the Coen Brothers’ debut, Blood Simple, and even used footage of American Ninja 4, which was fortuitously playing on the motel television while filming. "There was something inherently cinematic about it," says Bagheri on first hearing Hynes’s track. "It was like an updated, demented 80s pop soundtrack, dark with catchy melodies."