Words / Mars Roesner
The Taino Spiral, an ancient symbol of nature’s force of rebirth, unfurls beyond the cinematic frame of LEXXE’s new music video for ‘Otherside’, toward a hypnotic expansion in her personal and professional presence.
‘Otherside’ depicts LEXXE arriving at the literal manifestation of death and the afterlife, a graveyard. Styled by Phil Gomez, and filmed by Michael Morales in the severe yet intoxicating daylight of a cemetery, LEXXE invites us to see a new side of her Scorpionic power. Among the headstones, we bear witness to her battle and subversion of generational shadows linking through her late father to her late paternal grandmother, Maria.
Though their relationship has layers, LEXXE fondly remembers Maria as a large supporter and now inspiration to return to her roots as a trained dancer, a label she now proudly embraces. As she moves her body fluidly through the cemetery, Lexxe is meditating on and offering up difficult truths while releasing her doubts at the altar of all the deceased loved ones in her lineage, especially Maria.
Throughout the short film, edited and directed by LEXXE’s fiancé Alexa San Sam Román, her anguish is palpable, her desire realized, and her larger coiling grief bared. LEXXE weaves prayer into her lyrics, burying and giving rest to worn-out cycles. Towards the end of the video, she emerges through a portal, released into her ‘otherside’ (which isn’t heaven, by the way). LEXXE honors the impact and importance of her past even in this new passage, depicted in the footage of Maria and other family members dancing across her new skies.
Nothing in this video is accidental; LEXXE expresses how lore not only feeds her process, but defines it, with secret meanings and easter eggs that echo into her entire discography. LEXXE and her creative team’s choices to lean deeper into a softer, daylight-flooded aesthetic are purposeful here, paralleling her inner evolutions and exploration of her softer sides. She is moving upwards and outwards, towards femininity, beautiful union with her partner, and perhaps the most famous classical stage in New York (shhhhhh!).
This song, and her subsequent album (yet to be revealed), are a devotional for these larger-than-life female figures, mortal AND mythical. LEXXE grew up in a deeply religious, Puerto Rican Catholic family, and though she’s not as religious as she once was, she still finds immense beauty and comfort in the severe and simple gothic foundations of the faith.
LEXXE refers to herself as a Bruja, a term for a spiritualist or healer blending Latin American, Indigenous, African, and European practices. Her music is etched with the influence of nighttime goddesses and water spirits. Mary, Rhiannon, Yemaya, and Atabey, to name a few. Truly a siren calling back her power, Otherside is proof that LEXXE has many more facets and phantasms left to explore.
Step behind the veil with these exclusive behind-the-scenes photographs by Sam San Román, captured during the making of Otherside:
