The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes

FEB 08 2005 · 12:00

The Postal Service - We Will Become Silhouettes (2005) Director: Jared Hess Era: Indie Electropop Golden Age (2005) - Peak era of indie sleeper-label breakthroughs on Sub Pop; synthpop nostalgia and post-9/11 post-apocalyptic anxiety filtered through DIY warmth High-value archival document at the intersection of mid-2000s indie music and independent American cinema. Directed by Jared Hess immediately after Napoleon Dynamite's breakout, the video is a rare example of a culturally significant film director applying a fully realized cinematic aesthetic to a music video for an equally significant indie music moment. Its warm surrealism, post-apocalyptic domestic concept, and desert Southwest visual language make it a distinctive and well-preserved record of its era. Context: Released February 8, 2005, as The Postal Service's fourth and most commercially successful single, reaching #3 in Canada, #82 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and #92 in the UK. The video arrived at the peak of the mid-2000s indie-sleeper phenomenon, with Sub Pop repositioning itself post-Nirvana as home to introspective electropop. The song's post-apocalyptic lyrical theme, stockpiled food, filtered water, inhospitable outside conditions, resonated with early-2000s ambient anxieties. Hess brought his Idaho/Utah Mormon-frontier visual language directly into the concept, blending American West landscapes with retro-domestic surrealism. The video also appeared at the moment Napoleon Dynamite had just become a mainstream cultural touchstone, lending unusual cinematic pedigree to an indie music video. Director notes: Hess directed this official Sub Pop Records music video, released January–February 2005, as a single from the album Give Up. Multiple contemporaneous sources confirm his sole directing credit. The video was produced in the immediate wake of Napoleon Dynamite's breakout success. Per HIP Video Promo's promotional sheet, Hess conceived the band as a 'space-age nuclear family' and built the concept around warm, flooded daylight cinematography meant to evoke the hallucinatory quality of an overexposed photograph. The production marks the first time all Postal Service members appeared together on screen in a music video. The desert mountain location and golden-hour silhouette finale directly illustrate the song's post-apocalyptic lyrical themes. Hess and Jerusha Hess are jointly credited by IMDb and TMDB as producers on the video.