DIANA Shows Us The Unsexy Realities of Tour Life in "What You Get" Video

Photo by Laurie Kang

The myth of touring being a highway of hedonism that bands have to travel down has by and large been quelled. No longer do we immediately think that tours are always drug or alcohol fueled orgies with rockers in the middle (and sometimes they are, which we hope is done with safety and consent.) Bands and musicians are still special, though, something of which translates to their audience with a kind of wonder. But musicians are like you or me: regular people who like to eat from a vegetable platter. And DIANA do just that for the new video for "What You Get."

The electro pop Toronto band's latest release from their excellent sophomore Familiar Touch visually depicts the welcome mundanity of traveling between cities with the electricity of actually performing for their fans. DIANA's Carmen Elle's feathery voice set against soft, steady drums frame the images we see of inky black city skylines and creamsicle coloured horizons in the distance so perfectly. Elle has, in the past, spoken about the anxiety she deals with and how that sometimes affects touring, seeing it as much more rigorous and hard and not necessarily a point of pleasure. The "What You Get" video shows us, more than anything, the communal feeling of being on tour; of who appears and what our central characters are like on the road. "What I really love about the "What You Get" video is that it is fully aligned with us, the band as people on tour. There's no high concept here, it's just us away from home and it's very real," singer Carmen Elle told Noisey via email. "Not in a gritty documentary style so much, but it's an ordinary life type of real ness. We drive a lot. We make jokes. We eat hummus. We spend too much time on our phones, you know? Real." Watch the video below and see where you can catch them on tour, completely full of hummus:

Tour Dates
6/24 - Edmonton, AB - The Needle Vinyl Tavern
6/26 - Vancouver, BC - Fortune Sound Club
6/27 - Seattle, WA - Barboza*
6/28 - Portland OR - Mississippi Studios*
6/30 - San Francisco, CA - The Rickshaw Stop*
7/1 - Los Angeles, CA - Bootleg Bar*
7/2 - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar*
7/3 - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar*
7/5 - Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge*
7/6 - Kansas City, MO - Encore*
7/7 - MInneapolis , MN - 7th St Entry*
7/8 - Chicago, IL - Schuba's Tavern*
* with Nicholas Krgovich Sarah is more of a spinach and artichoke dip kind of person. Follow her on Twitter.