When toxic love lacerated Kasia Lavon’s heart a few years ago, she had two options: Mop up the mess, or let it bleed out. And she wasn’t about to fester in a puddle of her own heartbreak.
The Boston singer-songwriter bandages the wounds of her past in her new video “Blood,” a vulnerable depiction of what Lavon calls one of her “lowest of lows” — a triumphant rise above it. The visual accompaniment for her spring album Vowelism arrived earlier this month (July 17), offering a window to a period when Lavon grappled with a partner’s cruelty disguised as romance. As the video opens, empty beer bottles and a flood of unfinished laundry surround her at the kitchen table, where she sits in a bathrobe, her forehead in her hand. “Blood alcohol level’s rising / Five-pack at 6 a.m.,” she sings with a sense of defeat.
“I was self medicating to the point of numbness,” Lavon shares with Vanyaland. “There is a focus of substance abuse in the song. There were times I was just so hurt by some of the words he would say to me. The communication was horrible!”
But “Blood” wasn’t written for wallowing. The song falls in the middle of Vowelism, presenting a turning point for Lavon’s emotional and mental well-being. As the video progresses, she purges the poison — bad love and the substances — and shrugs off her robe in favor of a fresh button-up, as she sweeps up the aftermath of her romance-inflicted funk.
“I wanted ‘Blood’ to be the first music video because it’s the most emotional song on the project, and I felt I could tell a visual story about how anything that looks good at first can turn sour,” she explains. “When that happens, we have the choice to stay and further self sabotage or to leave and end the situation entirely. It’s me saying ‘get out’ at the end that really puts the nail in the coffin of a dead relationship. There are bottles and a full ashtray in the scenery in the beginning, and at the end I’m cleaning up the mess to further symbolize the shift.”
Watch the healing in real time with Lavon below.