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Millie Bobby Brown And Los Feliz's Sowden House Star In The XX's New Music Video
There's a certain calm the orange glow of the L.A. sun washes over everything. It's the thing you think about when you move away. The openness, the sky, the pervasiveness of heat. It's hard not to imagine Los Angeles on a quiet July afternoon—the hills golden with dead grass, the fata morgana caused by the scorching pavement, the droning whirr of a ceiling fan—the way you dream about the laugh of a former lover even if they weren't always laughing.
It's the gentleness of this aching memory—the same gentle ache of teenage love—that The XX have captured in their music video for "I Dare You" (off their third album I See You), which was released Thursday.
The video, which stars Stranger Things' Millie Bobby Brown, begins on exactly one of those sun-soaked days in L.A. Brown is staring at the sky pretending to read a vision chart, and misses her school bus (a scene dripping with the colors of bougainvillea, rosebushes, and the terra cotta tiles of a Hacienda-style house's roof).
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As swelling, atmospheric sounds begin to play, Brown returns home and overhears her older sister cancel some hooky plans with her boyfriend now that "the little monster missed her bus." Unwilling to be left out, Brown re-engineers the situation so that she'll be taken along. "Now you have to take me," she begins, threatening to tell mom otherwise. "Anyway, I dare you."
From here, we begin a journey around Los Angeles through the eyes of high school lovers. On view? The bizarre mix of L.A.'s architecture, front lawns exploding in bloom, and more than one instance of the Lloyd Wright family's residential designs. First is the Ennis Brown House, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1924 landmark standing in the Los Feliz hills. Then it's off to the Sowden Housethe 1926 masterpiece that was designed by Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright's son, and was rumored to be the site of the Black Dahlia murder.
"Yo, hello no," one of the teens begins upon arrival to the Sowden House, a nod to the Black Dahlia tale. "You know this place is haunted right? Like, for real haunted."
"I dare you to follow me," his girlfriend says to him, as they all enter the house.
Alasdair McLellan directed the video, which also stars Paris Jackson (spot the Bad tattoo on her hand) and Ashton Sanders. Catch the entire video below, and enjoy all of Brown's performance as we await season 2 of Stranger Things. [h/t Curbed LA
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