If you're not across Brisbane-base Jaguar Jonze's genre-bending style - woozy indie guitars, stirring vocals and moody '70s inspo - then you're absolutely missing out.
Japanese-born to a Taiwanese mum and an Australian dad, Jaguar Jonze's visuals are also super striking, often throwing back to her Asian heritage, and the video we're about to premiere joins the stable of evocative imagery she has created.
Jaguar has covered a 2000s classic this week, Britney Spears' Toxic, and while we've heard the original kitschy, pop dream a thousand times, this time she's flipped it completely and made it a lot darker in response to the work she's been doing to lead the #metoo movement in Australia's own backyard. The video itself is bathed in a sinister red, with Jaguar singing through a sheer curtain in what looks like a dive bar. There's even a hint of the manic crab-walking we witnessed in her live show back at BIGSOUND 2019.
She says, "I often take to songwriting as an outlet for all my emotions, but after an overwhelming few weeks being on the frontline of the recent #metoo movement in the Australian music industry, sometimes it's all too much to sit down and pen your own song. Sometimes, singing a cover in your own way is the best catharsis. After receiving more than 400 stories of people with their own individual sexual harassment/assault stories in my inbox, talking to media to represent the many voices that often feel scared and silenced, and doing my best to do what I can within the strict limitations of defamation laws in Australia, I just felt sick to my stomach. I knew what that feeling was because I had felt it all too often before - toxic.
"And so, in light of the recent discussions around a certain US record label and #FreeBritney it reminded me of my favourite pop song. As a child, I completely missed the message and tone of what the song actually was and, revisiting it as an adult, I wanted my cover to draw out how my understanding of the song has changed. This is my ode to all the people who stood up alongside me these last few weeks against toxic masculinity, toxic relationships and toxic environments in the music industry. We hear you, we see you and time is up."
