Car Seat Headrest is a popular and acclaimed indie rock band whose new album, The Scholars, will be released on May 2, 2025, through Matador Records. Their first single, ‘Gethsemane’, has just been made into a transcendent video by Director/Cinematographer extraordinaire Andrew Wonder. Wonder recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length]
Tell me how you got involved with this music video.
I got an email from Matador Records around Christmas about the new Car Seat Headrest album. They were looking for a director to do a music video. I told them I didn’t want to pitch or write a treatment, but if I spoke to the artist and there was a connection, I’d be open to doing it.
I met with Will Toledo, and we hit it off instantly. I described my process for my film Feral, which is very organic. He’d seen the film and loved it. I put together a script in a week, and he liked it—this began a great partnership.
Have you worked on a music video before?
I haven’t done a music video in many years. It’s not my preferred genre; I focus on storytelling and character and building visual language that way. I was intrigued by this project because I realized that it could be an opportunity to make something akin to a silent film.
Which silent films inspired this?
Carl Theodor Dreyer’s film Vampyr is just incredible. I really liked People on Sunday. The opening shot in the woods really came from there, but the biggest inspiration was Maya Deren’s Meshes in the Afternoon. The mirror faces really affected me. The freedom of those twenties through forties films without sound was compelling.
What were some challenges of doing a two-day shoot for an 11-minute piece?
The two-day shoot was probably the biggest challenge. Usually, the music conforms to the content; with a music video, it’s the other way around. I listened to the song several times, and it put me in a fugue state. I got to some deep places, and that’s where a lot of the story came from—from some personal feelings.
It was all about finding a rhythm to allow filmmaking to come in and out. Can you spend 30 seconds on someone’s face in a video like this? Can you use transitions this way? The biggest challenge was figuring out how much story, how much to trust the choreography, and how much it worked.
What was it like working with the actors?
I really wanted this to be a performance-based story. With our small budget and little time, we could focus on Philip Ettinger’s face and Stephanie Troyak’s movement, creating emotion without dialogue. This really forced us to be really personal with each other and really talk about our personal experiences and moments with feelings.
Where did you shoot it, by the way?
We shot one day up in Blauvelt, New York. The tunnels there were a training ground for soldiers in WWI. Orin Black, my co-writer and producer, had these in mind from the beginning, and they were just perfect.
My goal was to do the surreal stuff at the end. I wanted to know what a reverse exorcism would look like. That’s from listening to the song. The Passion of Joan of Arc also came to mind—what if a trial wasn’t based on doing something good or innocent but on your sins?
The crew and I shared many personal stories, and the story kept coming through those conversations. As we got to the end with the cult members and the impregnation, I wanted to make sure the first half felt grounded.
Having successfully done this, how do you think it will inform your future film work?
I looked at this as an opportunity to test for my next feature. I returned to the system and saw how they are making films now. I still find their approach too formal, and I feel like there are more efficient and interesting ways to approach the art of filmmaking. I’ve been working on the script for my next feature every day. I feel like I’ve found a lot of great people on this project.
What kind of feedback have you gotten from the band and their fans?
I love the band. Will is a real artist. I’ve been a fan of Car Seat Headset for a while, and I’m emotionally tied to their music. The band has been so supportive of the video. It’s been interesting to see how it ties into the band’s culture and how fans interpret little things in the video as code. I haven’t been part of a band with such a fan base before, so it’s been really rewarding.
Car Seat Headrest’s new album The Scholars will be available May 2nd, 2025.
