Indie-pop singer-songwriter LeRiche has released a new video for his single ‘Under Covers.’ Straight out of Port aux Basques, Newfoundland, LeRiche’s tunes aren’t what you’d expect from one of Canada’s oldest fishing towns, and his video might just be a mind-bending murder mystery.
‘Under Covers’ itself “is about two people at an emotional crossroads trying to work things out,” says LeRiche. “It’s about give and take; intimacy and honesty.” The song also serves as a reminder that “it’s often the simplest gesture that reminds us that someone cares,” he adds. “I don’t write them very often but this one’s a love song.”
It’s an odd sentiment to portray in a music video that hints at something very sinister.
The video depicts the highs and lows of two people riding the love rollercoaster. It starts with a couple, who are sharing happy moments underneath the covers.Then the twist.We watch the sudden and unexplained demise of the relationship, and suddenly, the guy is gone. The rest of the video cuts back and forth between memories shared between the two and clips of the girl, who is chopping up nuts and arranging scrabble letters.
Eventually the peanuts are arranged around the still body of the guy, and the scrabble letters are made to spell out “peanuts kill.” In the end, she lays a lace cloth over top of him. It’s a combination of happiness, intimacy, sadness and longing all mashed together to form one cohesive emotional journey.
We have a number of theories about what’s happening here, most of which revolve around peanut allergies.
- He’s allergic to peanuts and as an act of desperation she’s formed a peanut-based barrier around him to keep him from leaving. Ultimately he dies, and stays with her forever.
- She’s allergic to peanuts. Those aren’t murder gloves, they’re preventative measures. She has encased her partner in peanuts because she actually fears commitment, and ends up losing him anyway. Because that’s what happens when you build peanut walls.
- No one is allergic to peanuts. The peanuts are a metaphor. They represent all the small things—the worries, the jabs, the ticks—that can add up and kill anything, relationships most of all. Death by a thousand wounds. It’s a lesson that we should let the little stuff go. Setting aside the potential for trauma induced fugue states, the imagery of this video evokes feelings of nostalgia and good memories. It serves to point out the fact that we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff in love and relationships.
Over it all, the soft acoustic guitar plays and LeRiche delivers his soulful vocals, giving the song a deceptively gentle feel. The beat is catchy and so are the lyrics—they lull us in with their relatability. While the song starts out as a feeling evoker, it ends with a clapping beat that makes you want to dance, and more than that, it wants you to sympathize with the main character.
Don’t ask us about the egg and the goldfish, though. That’s a mystery for another day.