In Finland, hobby horsing is treated with serious regard. The disembodied heads on sticks are offered the same consideration as a real horse might be, and ridden with artistic fervor. Its competitions are sophisticated, and handled with immense care. The hobby horse makes a cameo in cumgirl8’s “cursed angel” for that disintegration of the boundary between fantasy and reality. The song and its accompanying video are celebrations of delusion, of toying with quantitative truth.

The video, premiering with Document, carries that ethos in all of its details. Set in the gloomy idyll of the Pyrenees, director Peter Kaaden sought structure from the landscape’s mercurial nature. “When you arrive there you directly get the feeling of being free while also feeling super trapped,” he muses. “You can walk and look super far without really getting anywhere or seeing anything different.” The video is spliced with animations from Frederike Hantel; in around 3,000 frames, her illustrations depict an internal picture of their invented world.

The New York four-piece elaborates: “‘cursed angel’ is about feeling like you’re slipping out of reality; it’s uncontrollable and sometimes you can’t contain it. If you don’t fight it, the outcome can be positive.”

The song comes from cumgirl8’s forthcoming EP, phantasea pharm, which was born from a fixation with Ella Fitzgerald’s “Old McDonald.” Initially imagined in aesthetic at a show in Charlottesville, Virginia—which saw Veronika Vilim in a cow leotard with pig accessories, Chase Lombardo in a g-string and apron that read “The Grillfather,” Avishag Cohen Rodrigues as a lawnmower, and Lida Fox dressed as sexy rooster—the concept soon pronged into a full-throttle collection of songs.

phantasea pharm’s farm-fresh whimsy is perhaps best embodied in “cursed angel”: not entirely childish in spirit, underscored with something a bit more muddled and dark.

Production Le Berg GmbH. Producer Gabriel Waldvogel. Post-producer Timo Grossmann. Director of Photography Tobias Blickle. Editor Anselm Koneffke. Colorist Florian Staerk. Title Designer Tim Grötzinger. Styling Camille Franke. Styling Assistant Antonio Chiocca. Designers Julia Bajanova and Lou de Bètoly. Special thanks Arri Rental, Sec Studio, and Studio L’Equipe.