Wintersleep, 'New Inheritors' -- Video Premiere

The next time a band needs inspiration for a music video concept, Halifax rockers Wintersleep suggest turning to YouTube -- just make sure to turn the volume down, way down.

"A friend from Glasgow had the idea that maybe 'New Inheritors' would lend itself more to a Northern Soul-type treatment so we looked Northern Soul up on YouTube," singer-guitarist Paul Murphy tells Spinner of how their brand new video came to be.

"It looks pretty beautiful -- the actual dancing. And then we played the song over the [silent] YouTube videos and they actually sync up really well, and so we wanted to incorporate that."

Compiled from archived footage of dance parties that regularly took place during the heyday of Northern Soul -- an underground movement which swept the UK in the late '60s where soul music became all the rage within youth culture -- Wintersleep's video, the fourth from their latest record which shares it's namesake with the song 'New Inheritors,' is a dazzling, hypnotic mix of tumbling bodies and retro fashion.


While Murphy and his bandmates don't take any credit for the making of the acutal video ("We didn't really do all that much except for the conceptual idea that accompanied our song, the label had to clear the footage and all that."), he's pleased that the Juno award-winning group was able to follow through on their artist vision.

"The song sort of has this Northern Soul-y sort of rhythm to it, and it definitely has a hopeful quality to it too, and I felt like the dancing captured that positive aspect."

As for advice for other musicians scouring YouTube for video ideas? Murphy warns that you have to be mindful of red tape.

"It's hard to get the footage -- you can't just steal it off YouTube. You can look for inspiration on YouTube but maybe follow it up with stock footage. That's definitely a way to do it."