The track marks the Chicago indie rock outfit’s second new single of the year
Chicago’s Beach Bunny are back with a new song, “Clueless,” about the one thing in this life that’ll never resolve — the passing of time.
“Clueless” is a charming indie pop-rock meditation on aging and memory, which singer/guitarist Lili Trifilio wrote back in February while “reflecting on the passing new year.” The track arrives with a music video, directed by Bertie Gilbert, in which a surprise birthday party for Trifilio turns into an existential conundrum and surreal time wrap, complete with fading photographs and a cake with numbered birthday candles that keep changing.
“Was it better? I was younger, different problems, different names,” Trifilio sings at one point. “Was it perfect? Was it simple? Was it more or less the same/How did it change? How did I change?”
In a statement Trifilio said she wrote “Clueless” in just a few minutes and, “in a lot of ways it wrote itself.” Despite the sense of melancholy in the lyrics, Trifilio said the song is “not supposed to be sad, I just hope it makes you feel something.”
She continued: “Time and changing are complicated subjects, I didn’t write this track with the intention of forming any conclusions, I really just needed to get my thoughts out — I still don’t understand it all, but that’s the fun part of being alive: figuring it out along the way.”
“Clueless” is Beach Bunny’s second single of the year, following “Vertigo,” which arrived back in June. The band also teamed up with Hank Heaven to drop the collaborative track, “Beloved,” in August. Beach Bunny’s most recent album, Emotional Creature, was released back in July 2022.
