Lily DeTaeye is truly a dynamo — with thirteen years of experience performing and multiple full-length releases under her belt, the Iowan-turned-New Yorker shows no sign of stopping. Her latest endeavor is the music video for “Westbound,” a fairly laid back song about moving onward and upward.
“I don’t remember when I wrote the song, but I found it during the pandemic,” DeTaeye said. “I found it in one of my songbooks and I recreated it a little bit because I just really didn’t remember the situation that led me to write it…I wanted it to be like a road trip song or like one of the songs that you’re driving and you kind of feel like this release of emotion and all of that stuff, and that’s what it was for me.”
DeTaeye collaborated with Iowa artist Amenda Tate for the creation of the “Westbound” video.
“I have always really loved the collage-style visuals that Amenda does, and she nails it in the music video…[the video] is very much about traveling. We’re talking about traversing distances, so there’s a lot of nods to maps, there’s a lot of nods to the stars and constellations and all of this stuff,” DeTaeye said. “Ultimately, the whole point is that we are kind of with ourselves no matter where we are, so even if we’re running from things, we’re the ones that are still with ourselves. So I think [the video] gets that across very well, and it’s just beautifully done and eclectic in this way that I was really hoping for it to be, and [Tate] killed it.”
Tate has an MFA in Integrated Visual Art and is currently a PhD candidate in Human-Computer Interaction at Iowa State University. Her artistic practice centers on the body in motion, and questions what the body can do digitally. Recently, she's been working on creating digital systems that use movement, cameras and custom-coded software to generate art from body movement. This process has involved some filmmaking and animation work, both skills that lent themselves to the creation of the “Westbound” video.
“As I was listening to the lyrics and thinking about the idea of going westward and the idea of starting over and navigating a new path or a new way of existing, [I was] thinking about what that looks like,” Tate said. “I felt like the visual idea of something that looked a little historic kind of fit. We talked about what the song meant to her and am I interpreting in a way that still resonates with [DeTaeye’s] intention. We came to this loose storyline that the goldfish has been in captivity and is setting out on her own in the wider ocean, and it has some encounters that uses the stars and the moon to maybe try and find a new path to somewhere else in the great wide ocean.”
Tate was the one who initially reached out to DeTaeye, as she was looking for a music video project to work on that would build her animation skills. She sourced the visuals for the video from a variety of sources, including images from the Library of Congress and vintage Valentines from her grandmother’s basement.
The premiere of the “Westbound” music video comes near the year anniversary of Hive Mind, DeTaeye’s second full-length record, which was recorded in Des Moines’ Golden Bear Records.
“I’m excited that it’s out there in the world,” DeTaeye said. “At its core, it’s all about letting go of things that don’t serve you anymore…I think it’s a good song to drive to.”
