Nico Yaryan's Video for "Just Tell Me" Is Casually Everything

Photo by Molly Steele

A friend of mine played me Nico Yaryan's "Just Tell Me" the other week while I was standing in my kitchen, which is the best way to find out about a new music: over a cup of tea, without having it shoved down your throat. The song is about six months old so I felt like I'd slept on it, but whatever, there's a lot of STUFF TO CONSUME IN THE WORLD, and this LA-based Northern Cali-born singer is a relative noob. (There's only one other track of his out in the world, "Old Gloria," almost as equally awesome, and this demo called "Driftin'".)

"Just Tell Me" is extremely easy listening vibes. It'll make you feel happy, like when you're listening to some prime cut Steely Dan. It's in the faintly echoed tone of his guitar, overlaid with that fuzzed up other guitar line, the skippy drum beat and the mellow, mellow magic of his voice. "Tell me the love is strong," he pleads.

It's a tune lifted from his forthcoming debut LP, What a Tease (out on Partisan on June 3), a debut entirely inspired by his transcontinental love story with a Dutch girl, who he met in Amsterdam while playing drums and touring with his high school buddy Hanni El Khatib. So began a lengthy love affair, splitting time between Amsterdam and working at a pot farm in Humboldt County. A month here amongst the weed, a month there, in love and strolling through the canal mapped streets.

Don't ask what happened with their romance—I don't have the answers—but below is the premiere of the video for "Just Tell Me." It's chill.

Note:

- The all white wear.

- The earnest way he furrows his brow while singing and squatting with some sneakers.

[Side note: The man of my dreams sports pale blue Levi's, a grey sweatshirt worth permanently borrowing and a pair of Chucks.]

"I hit up Daniel Henry to direct this video because I’m a big fan of his work, and he came all the way out from Nashville to make it happen," explains Nico. "We shot at the Inglewood Swapmeet with the amazingly talented Kate Arizmendi as director of photography, and we ended up casting a few people that were working and shopping in there. It was a lot of fun! I used to work at a sneaker shop so I had to get some white Air Force Ones in a featured role, too."

Watch it below and leave completely unsatified till June. What a tease indeed.

Men who wear Chucks, Levi's and grey sweatshirts can message Kim Taylor Bennett on Twitter.