Watch Justin Fallen and the Angels’ celebration of Austin in their video for “Dancehall,” premiering on GroundSounds. Justin Fallen says this about the video:
Dancing is big for me – I dance in dancehalls and I dance when I’m on stage, so it was important to me that the first release be a dance song. I met up with Athan Bernal and Nyle Emerson, who call themselves 8th and Nyle, who have a passion that I connected with. We wanted to make sure Austin and the energy of the city that inspired the song was captured. They pretty much took it from there, got their friends together to do some dancing, and were creative about how to do the whole thing. Most of the shots are spontaneous and unplanned around town to catch the feel of the spirit of Austin.
6th street in Austin is pretty crazy. people go nuts when you stick a camera up in the middle of the street like that – that was all spur of the moment, with whoever was walking by joining in. We ended up having to leave early because it was too big of a scene – people were throwing full beer cans from the roof and college guys kept seeming to want to take off their clothes and simulate blowjobs in front of the camera. All that footage was done in less than fifteen minutes before it got too wild to even stay there.
There’s something mysterious about the whole thing, kind of a pied piper narrative – like everywhere you go, dancing can happen.