Niecy Blues – “Ways” (Video)

Niecy Blues is currently tearing through the ranks of the South Carolina music scene, especially after teaming up with veteran rock group ET Anderson for live shows. Her song “Ways” drew a ton of attention when it was released last year, including being chosen as local music podcast The Fringe’s top song of 2017. The Contour-produced track now has some visual accompaniment that adds an element of storytelling and helps flesh out Niecy’s vision for the song.

I won’t lie, when I first heard “Ways”, I didn’t picture sorcery as one of the “ways of making you do what I want you to.” Now that I’ve seen the video, though, I like the song even more. The music video transforms what I took as a kind of fucked-up love song into a haunting vision of voodoo magic that makes me look over my shoulder to make sure I’m still actually in control of myself. Maybe I never was?

Set at Northwest Grill in Traveler’s Rest, SC, the video starts with a young man pulling up to the eerily-lit diner and grabbing a table by himself. The restaurant is filled with several cadaverous characters who are just minding their own business while our protagonist begins to have a psychotic break. Ignoring him at first, they eventually try to subdue him but are unable to snap him out of the spell that’s been cast on him. Cut between the scenes at Northwest Grill, we see Niecy Blues in a dark room, singing and pulling the strings to make our protagonist tick. The video ends when another man walks in to grab a table by himself, presumably to be drawn into the same condition of Niecy Blues-induced mind control.

I have to say that this is one of the coolest music videos I’ve seen in a long time. Congrats to Niecy Blues and the entire team working on this project for putting together this horror-film-worthy depiction of “Ways”.