New Jersey singer-songwriter Donna Missal is giving you the full picture in her first music video for latest single ‘Driving,” available today (May 4) exclusively on Billboard.
“‘Driving’ is my first music video, and it was really important for me to put myself out there physically, and show up for this with a willingness to be myself and embrace my body,” Missal tells Billboard. “I want to see beauty standards reflect reality in every industry and music is such a big part of what shapes our culture, so I figured I should start with myself.”
“‘No more sucking it in!’ I kept telling myself on set,” she adds.
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The video arrives as a collaboration with renowned photographer Justin Bettman, whose Set in the Street series provided the inspiration for the multi-dimensional, retro-fitted domestic aesthetic.
“We both wanted the music video to feel like a short film with her song as the background as opposed to a traditional performance music video,” Bettman says. “The film is about empowerment and breaking out of the box that we often create for ourselves.”
Missal adds, “[Justin] builds sets in unexpected places and photographs them, first within the set, only showing the viewer what is inside of it, then again from a distance… I wanted to turn this concept into a video for this song because of all these parallels I was finding between what it visually represented to me and what the song is about.”
The theme of creating “barriers between myself and what I want or where I want to go” reaches its poetic peak when Missal quite literally smashes down the walls and frees herself in a satisfying and celebratory slo-mo getaway.
Missal is capping the release weekend off with back-to-back support shows with alternative rapper k.flay, and is looking to present her debut album later this year via Harvest Records.
Check out the video for “Driving” below.