Video Premiere: Mason Brothers, “Calling Out To You”

Last month, Mason Brothers celebrated the release of their third album, Ivy In The Orange Grove, by driving to Nashville and opening a sold-out show for Imagine Dragons. Today, the party continues with the video premiere of the album’s second single, “Calling Out To You.”

Veering between minor-key guitar interludes, piano arpeggios, lush harmonies and a breezy folk-rock chorus, “Calling Out To You” feels like a summary of everything these Virginians do best. It’s also the first song they recorded in the Orange Grove, their home studio in downtown Richmond.

The song was nearly written by accident. “I sat down with the guitar,” frontman James Mason explains, “and the girl I was with at the time was interested in more mainstream-type music. So I said something half joking to her, like, “I’m gonna write a pop song.” Then I just started strumming the standard C / G / D chords and sang some funny improv lyrics to make her laugh or smile or whatever. But then at the end, I was like “I think there’s a good melody there,” so I wound up working on it as a real song, using that same melody as the center of the song.”

In the music video, shot on location by documentarian Chris Aguilar, the guys pal around at the studio, play the song and hit up a local pub. “It was all totally natural,” Mason says of the shoot. “It’s just us doing what we normally do as a band — rehearsing and recording in the Grove, going out to bars here in Richmond, just doing our thing.”