Delta Rae, 'Bottom of the River' -- Video of the Day

Artist: Delta Rae
Video: "Bottom of the River"
Highlight: "'Bottom of the River' has always had mysterious origins," singer Eric Holljes tells Spinner. "The chorus of the song came to me in a dream, which was a rare and strange experience. I don't recall the dream, but I do remember rushing to my phone in a haze at 4AM to record it and in the morning I played it for my brother, Ian, who wrote the verses in a matter of hours. It's really uncommon for a song to come that quickly when we're writing. It felt as if it wanted to be written.


"When making the video, we felt strongly about maintaining the creepiness and mystery of the song; however it was never important to do a direct depiction of the story in the song. After eight frustrating months of fruitless ideating, Ian suggested telling the story of a witch trial, which immediately resonated. Our director, Lawrence Chen, has a great eye for what works on screen and he helped pull together local dancers and ship in 40 Beijing opera masks from China to make it as compelling a performance as we could. We shot almost the entire video in one night with a tiny budget collected from shows we had played over that year and a cast/crew of 60-plus friends and local talent. It was a huge collaborative effort and we couldn't have done it without the amazing work and effort of so many people. We still can't believe we pulled it off!" Check out a live medley from the band here.