Premiere: Jess Locke teases her new album, shares video for Destroy Everything

Header image by Ian Laidlaw.

Jess Locke is someone who at this point, needs no introduction. The Melbourne-based musician is a multi-faceted heavyweight that has grown into one of the country's most applauded names; her 2017-released second album Universe being a spectacular record that found Jess Locke pushed into the upper echelon of Australia's indie-rock/pop scene, something that's only been solidified with a sprinkling of singles that have come out in the time since.

One of those singles was Fool, arriving back in July amidst calls of it being her best work to date; a peak in the musician's career that shows how she's continually evolved and pushed her sound forwards even the space of just a few years (and, additionally, marking her arrival to new label home Dot Dash Recordings). What people didn't know, however, is that it was the first taste from her forthcoming third album Don't Ask Yourself Why, which with the release of her latest song Destroy Everything at the tail-end of last month, officially made itself known.

Expected for arrival on March 26th 2021, Don't Ask Yourself Why is an album bound to further Jess Locke's imprint in Melbourne's indie-pop scene and its dominance not just on a national level, but an international level too. It brings on new collaborators and new recording spaces, and in turn, is an album that reflects a more in-tune and evolved Jess Locke, whether that be musically - as shown in the album's teases thus far - but also in its lyrical theme; the album said to encourage deeper, more reflective thinking on one's self and the greater world around them.

Destroy Everything is an example of that deeper thinking, as Locke herself explains: "The song Destroy Everything is about destruction as both a positive and negative force," she says. "Destruction of the old can be necessary in order to make way for new and better things. It can be strategic, revolutionary, inspired by a vision of what is to come next. But destruction can also be reactionary and misdirected, born out of chaos and fear and not really conducive to real change. The song is a kind of meditation on whether destruction is useful or futile or part of a natural and unavoidable cycle."

Today, we premiere the single's official video clip, directed by Nick Manuell. The video is a one-take affair that really takes the theme of destroying everything to heart, with Jess Locke sitting at the table's end of what seems like a dinner party soon turned into a chaotic food fight of-kinds; broken champagne glasses and smashed cakes bringing chaos in front of Jess who, amidst all of it, holds her composure and delivers the single's aching melodies. "The video was all done in one take which was both very fun and very nerve racking because we only had one of everything - one bottle of champagne, one cake, one set of glasses… somehow we pulled it off and it came out perfectly," she says.

As mentioned, Don't Ask Yourself Why isn't out until March 2021, but you can pre-order it here, and dive into the video clip for Destroy Everything below:

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