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Music

Totemo Is Made of Magic: Watch Her Elegant Video for "Kick"

Shot in a crumbling parking lot in Tel Aviv, Totemo's latest work is a piece of fluid beauty.

We first fell for Totemo thanks to her gorgeous song "Hits" and it's incredibly intimate and exposing video which documented her harrowing experiences with cancer and chemotherapy and coming through all this to continue to create (we premiered it back in June). Just this one song, this one video, certified her as our latest obsession but she's no one hit wonder. She's already a massive star in Tel Aviv with a catalog packed with pop songs that are bewitching and svelte—"Hits" in particular marrying East Asian influences with some synthpop panache. A meeting ground between Purity Ring and Lykke Li, if you absolutely had to quantify it like that.

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For her latest single "Kicks" the video swaps out candid handheld shots for a much more precise, choreographed aesthetic. The fluidity of their dance moves stand in stark contrast to the crumbling parking lot concrete. When she sings "Let me know where do you want me to kick you," it's an offer that sounds as seductive and a nibble on the neck.

"'Kick'" video was shot by Yonatan Birenbaum and myself in an old parking lot in TLV," explains Totemo

It features Ran Jacobovitz and Dan Carpman, who are the on-stage musicians in my live act.
The song is about contact with other people and the outside world, and the video explores this subject literally, using Contact—a dance technique in which points of physical contact provide the starting point for exploration through movement improvisation."