Don’t Get Lemon is a captivating, paradoxical, and chic pop trio hailing from Austin and Houston, Texas. Their music exudes an aura of detachment while maintaining a catchy and danceable quality. Drawing inspiration from the vibrant music scenes of 1970s Berlin and 1980s Manchester, DGL aims to captivate the listener’s senses with their fusion of glam and synth-pop elements. While there may be other alternatives to DGL, one wonders if we could truly embrace them.

Taking its name from Michaelangelo Antonioni’s iconic 1966 film set in swinging London, Don’t Get Lemon’s track “Blow-Up” offers glimpses into the unseen darkness. The lyrics, crafted using William Burroughs’ cut-up technique, and imagery inspired by David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” weave together bittersweet melodies that offer a fresh perspective on the traditional three-minute pop song.

We sat down with the band to talk about their new video for “Blow-Up,” below!

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically?

The song explores the dark underbelly of what seems to be a normal and mundane surface level reality, themes explored in films Blue Velvet and Blow-Up. The lyrics take these surreal dreamlike vignettes, and using the cut up technique, attempts to create order in an orderless world. We visualized this song because of it’s own influence from film.

2. What was the inspiration behind this video(visuals, storyline, etc.)?

The inspiration visually was repurposed from those two films, Blue Velvet and Blow-Up.  We took the light nature of suburbia and contrasted that with the Lynchian darkness of night that hides beneath it. From Blow-Up we borrowed swinging 60s London fashion, even recreating the protagonists outfit. The video director Jennifer Battaglia also took parts of the lyrics like, “building tooth castles in my mind” and tried to visualize, that’s where the sugar cube idea came from.

3. What was the process of making this video?

We filmed the video over two days around Houston before a show we were playing. We filmed around various parts of Houston but most of the shots are in the West University neighborhood and also the east end. Those two neighborhoods have a constraint that helps the light and dark parts of the video. We also got two friends to act in the video, the two mod girls, on of which, Darenda, sang back up vocals on the song.