Serena Ryder and the Beauties, 'Slow' -- Video Premiere

Serena Ryder may have missed her calling. Though she's made a name for herself as a guitar-touting singer-songwriter (earning a Juno nod in the process), Ryder's talents haven't been fully realized if her rendition of the Kylie Minogue track 'Slow' is any indication of her pop diva chops.

With dirty, sexed-up beats, courtesy of her backing band the Beauties, Ryder barrels headfirst into the realm of dance-pop. Her vixen voice is a force to reckon with here, and makes you wonder if perhaps the Toronto songbird would do well to shed her indie-roots pedigree for something a little more disco-friendly.

"We all dug the sexiness of 'Slow,'" Ryder tells Spinner, noting that it was the Beauties and producer Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene who set the tone for the driving final track on the 'Serena Ryder and the Beauties' EP.

"It was all the Beauties and Kevin's doing. I just sat there and sang whatever came while they created my landscape," says Ryder. "It was decadent for me. Kind of like when you're a kid and your parent makes the bed while you're in it -- you're happy, they're happy, and the story books are already written, piled up beside the bed ready to take you to dreamland."

Ryder's mind might have been on dreamland, but music video director Hill Kourkoutis was honed in on short shorts and body-rocking dance moves (Thom Yorke and his fancy footwork in Radiohead's 'Lotus Flower' video has nothing on these dancers).

"Naturally, the musicality of the song had a major contributing factor in the video's direction," says Kourkoutis. "It's just light, pure and fun, and the dancers involved fully invested themselves in the moments they created.

"It is a display of the birth and creation of life expressed through one of the purest forms of art. The use of dance was the primary mode of expressing the birth of an idea -- the so-called 'spark' -- due to its free-flowing and visceral nature."




Buy Serena Ryder and the Beauties 12" Vinyl EP