Not My Kinda Party: Two Throwdowns You Won’t See At CMA Fest

Florida Georgia Line’s most recent video for “This Is How We Roll,” featuring Luke Bryan, includes pyrotechnics, dirt bike stunts, half-naked girls posing with trucks and dancing on tables, and the protagonists singing while riding on top of a semi-truck.

But it’s the much darker and more rustic party scene that’s presented in two new videos that shows Americana and mainstream “bro-country” couldn’t be further apart.

Our March/April cover artist, Hurray For The Riff Raff, form a girl gang “called The Gaslight Girls” in their new vintage-themed video for “I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright).” The girls run around a roller disco and face off with an opposing male gang called “The Morrisons.”  The clip features rope, knives, mug shots and ether– a scene that’s in sharp contrast to the song’s classic country feel, with its breezy steel-guitar and Alynda Lee Segarra’s Patsy Cline-esque vocals. The song is from Hurray For The Riff Raff’s most recent album, Small Town Heroes, released in February.

Hurray for the Riff Raff – I Know It’s Wrong (But That’s Alright) from Rookie on Vimeo.

In Jason Isbell’s new video for “Super 8,” the party is even more low-key – just a group of young people hanging out at a hotel, drinking from red Solo cups and having a pillow fight. But the video quickly goes south when one of them doesn’t wake up the next morning. The hotel scenes are interspersed with scenes of Isbell and his band performing at a large venue. “If I ever get back to Bristol, I’m better off sleeping in the county jail/Don’t wanna die in a Super 8 Motel,” Isbell sings. The hotel drama takes one more turn just as Isbell and his band prepare to take their final bow. “Super 8” is from Southeastern, released last June. Read our cover story on Jason Isbell here.