Nick Koenig a.k.a. Hot Sugar’s new video for his song “Sinkies” is a drug-fueled trip down a Harmony Korine-esque wormhole.
It’s ultimately about love, lost connections, and how we communicate and survive in the age of the internet. But it starts with some good old-fashioned threats of dog homicide.
From there the video gets weirder and more warped. "Sinkies is a word my ex-girlfriend came up with to describe the feeling of having your heart drop into your stomach -- whether it be caused by jealousy, defeat or just plain depression," Hot Sugar says.
The track is a stuttering, jittery, ethereal mess that will likely give you the sinkies. Typical Hot Sugar, basically. His unique production style -- his songs are made entirely out of sounds he records on the street and builds audio collages with the samples -- has won him lots of influential fans, ILoveMakonnen among them. "He's a bonafide musical genius," Broad City music supervisor Matt FX Feldman, who uses Hot Sugar's music on BC, tells BuzzFeed Music. Perhaps that's why he's already, in his young career, the subject of a documentary, Hot Sugar's Cold World, which is an official selection at this year's SXSW Film Festival and is described as "a fly-on-the-wall look into the life of a modern-day Mozart."
On “Sinkies” Hot Sugar says he worked in the sounds of an ATM machine, a dollhouse burning, the wind blowing over his family tombstone, and a girl blowing out candles seductively, among other things.
“Since I wanted to make a sad song I also used Elliot Smith’s piano (at my friend’s studio in L.A.). Also, I lit bottle rockets and other fireworks indoors with Martin Starr about a year ago. A lot of the drum crashes are slow motion fireworks exploding,” Hot Sugar says.
Watch Hot Sugar's "Sinkies" -- premiering exclusively on BuzzFeed Music -- in full below. Hot Sugar's new album God's Hand is out now.
