Rising Norwegian singer Girl in Red, known off-stage as Marie Ulven, is all about creating vivid scenarios for her at home audience, whether it’s through melodies and harmonies or her evocative music videos. But on her most recent track, Ulven is delivering her most fully-realized concept to date.
On Wednesday (May 8), Girl in Red dropped her new song and video for “Dead Girl in the Pool,” a bright, up-tempo track with a much darker concept than the music suggests. Both the song and the video depict Ulven waking up after a raging house party, only to find that someone didn’t make it through the night. “There’s a dead girl in the pool/ I don’t know what to do,” she sings, before revealing the ultimate twist — “I’m the dead girl in the pool.”
Throughout the video, Ulven repeatedly wakes up, constantly finding her own dead body in the pool outside her home following a party, like a demented version of Groundhog Day. Eventually, the video shows Ulven getting down at a party, having a late night swim with friends, and later on taking a dive into the pool, without ever revealing what actually did or didn’t happen.
In a statement released with her new track, Ulven said that while the song isn’t literally about finding a corpse, it is about the feeling of dread that comes with that. “I had the line ‘there’s a dead girl in the pool,’ and this little music video of the morning after a party playing in my head,” she said. “It’s kind of about feelings of anxiety and questioning your identity, and the video will hopefully show that!”
“Dead Girl in the Pool” is just one of Girl in Red’s recent string of singles, including “Watch You Sleep” and “I Need to Be Alone,” off of her upcoming EP Chapter 2, due out later this year. The singer is also finishing her most recent tour around the world, with upcoming dates in New York and L.A. already sold out.
Check out Girl in Red’s new song and video for “Dead Girl in the Pool” below: