Music video from band Quiet Hounds selected for Atlanta Film Festival | Arts & Culture

Quiet Hounds, an Atlanta-based band, recently had the music video for its song “Emperors” selected for the Atlanta Film Festival. Eric Toledo, an Athens native and member of Quiet Hounds, said they’ve always wanted to mix elements of dance into their music, and that’s what they were aiming for with their new video.

“Dance is something we’ve always wanted to incorporate in live performance in the past, and it just kind of felt like a natural extension of the way the movement and the rhythm played out,” he said. “We had a really rough articulation of personality.”

Connections in the Atlanta creative community helped bring the video to life, Toledo said.

“It just so happened right around that time some members of the Atlanta Ballet spun off a dance troupe called Terminus [Modern] Ballet Theatre,” he said. “A good friend of ours’ girlfriend was part of that troupe, so as we were knocking around ideas and kind of bouncing ideas off of him, it just occurred to us that, ‘Oh, what’s Tara doing?’”

Toledo said that they got advice from Tara on how to incorporate dance into the video.

“Tara Lee, who’s the choreographer for the video, took these really rough ideas we had around personality and duality and really used movement to dictate that,” Toledo said. “You see the characters intertwine in a sort of internal struggle, and two faces kind of representing the true self and sort of fake self.”

Deke Spears, another member of the band, said that he was excited to delve into this other art form for the video.

“We’ve really been looking for an opportunity to do something in the dance world, and it really just felt like this was an awesome opportunity for that. We haven’t really made a legitimate music video in quite a few years,” he said. “The last one we did was very artistic and it featured the Quiet Hounds in the video. We talked through what we would want to make [in the future as] more as kind of an art piece.”

Spears talked about the band’s desire to collaborate with someone in a different sort of art form.

“We really decided that we wanted to do something that featured someone else’s art — something that could have a shared platform with another kind of culture,” he said.

Toledo said that when that platform is shared, the art takes on its own identity.

“When you have another art form that essentially projects and amplifies the initial vision — that’s the creative energy we thrive in and the reason we like working with other creatives and bring a lot of other artists to give us a different perspective on our own work,” Toledo said. “That’s been a joy, to let it take on a life of its own.”

Another collaboration that Quiet Hounds is involved in is their “Dinner Bell” series. It features a chef cooking and a band “accompanying” the meal. Spears said that the idea stemmed in part from the band’s desire create something special for their audiences.

“We’re always kind of brainstorming about ideas that we can put together to give people an experience. Part of the philosophy of the group is creating things that are experience-driven,” he said. “We kind of started tampering around with the idea of bringing in chefs and doing something.”

Spears said that they then found a way to incorporate their ideas with their desire for community.

“As we thought through it, it felt like a really cool idea to bring this kind of communal thing together, with people seated together and eating together and sharing something, bringing in a guest musician and a guest chef to kind of riff off of each other and create something. In a way we’re kind of like the wallflowers to the whole experience,” Spears said.

A new experience for the band will be the premiere of their new video at the Film Festival. Toledo described just what he was feeling leading up to the debut.

“I’m always really anxious about big reveals like this,” he said. “It’s almost easier to kind of release it into the world and not see people’s reaction in the room versus being in the room and kind of looking around being exposed to what type of reaction you might get.”

Despite this, Toledo’s still looking forward to the premiere of his band’s new video.

“It’s definitely something I’m excited to share. It’s not that often that you get to share something like this in a room full of people that are not only artful people but critical of film in particular and film lovers,” he said. “I personally am a bit anxious about it, but I’m super excited to be playing it and just sharing it more broadly.”