Fontaines D.C. are on a pilgrimage for Romance, trying to uncover whatever shards of it still exist among the horrors of modern life. Perhaps at first glance, they’re unconventional, even violent or repulsive, but they’re worth hanging on to, even with a desperate grasp.

“Here’s the Thing”, the latest single from their upcoming fourth studio album, chronicles romance through the lens of obsession. It’s a track riddled with anxiety and fear. So, when Luna Carmoon, director of 2023’s Hoard, set about translating these sonic themes to film, it was the simultaneous hideousness and beauty of teenage girlhood that came to mind.

By conjuring a universe akin to ​​Joel Schumacher’s The Lost Boys and instilling careful references to Carrie, The Craft and even Yes’s ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ video, Carmoon traces the ugliness and grit of adolescence. “What’s more Cronenberg than being a girl?” she says, laughing. “It’s so violent. You’re transforming, feeling things for the first time. It’s all so fast and alien and just rapid, you feel like you’re bursting out your skin like a tarantula.”

The video follows Jennifer (named in a homage to Phenomena’s Jennifer Connelly), an unconventional Irish dancer subject to ridicule by her peers. She finds solace and support in a ‘Lost Girls’-esque group of friends – comprised of otherworldly beings Goat, Snake, Bird and Cat. Enigmatic and slightly harrowing, they’re part teen and part spirit, using their powers to summon chaos as a defence for Jennifer. Through friendship (and sometimes violence), Jennifer becomes the version of herself she was desperately seeking, yet unable to reach alone.

This evolution echoes a shift in subject matter for Fontaines D.C., who have been granted a new perspective through the birth of guitarist Carlos O’Connell’s daughter. “We’re just trying to find our values and what’s important to us,” Fontaines’ bassist Conor Deegan tells Dazed. The video explores this through the maximalist, diamante-embedded world of Irish dance. “It’s a dedication to something that’s very, very strange,” Deegan continues. “If you put Irish dancers in front of some people who have never been exposed to it, they would say ‘what the hell is this?’ It’s nice to be able to, in some way, give a platform to that corner of Irish, female youth.” Here, Carmoon and Deegan tell us more about the inspirations behind it.

THE BRIEF

Luna Carmoon: I had, at the time, recently rewatched one of my favourite films: Dario Argento’s Phenomena, which is the biggest influence on the music video. I just thought it'd be fantastic to see a world like this in the backdrop of the Irish dancing arena. You have a lot of films like Drop Dead Gorgeous about American Beauty pageants, but you don’t really have that in Britain or Ireland, that kind of hyper-femininity meets violence. The Lost Boys was another big influence. I wanted it to be Lost Boys but Girls.

It just felt like the lyrics fit that world of obsession too. When you watch something like The Craft, the girls are working against her, but in this I wanted them to activate her. It’s that thing when you find a really good girlfriend, they make you see your value, and they make you become more like yourself.

THE ROLE OF ROMANCE

Conor Deegan: One of the themes for the album is finding these places of romance in life that are separate from Irishness. In our previous albums, we always explored romance through Irishness, and we wanted to see where else we could find that. Carlos [O’Connell, Fontaines’ guitarist] had a kid and it goes beyond these things. Romance is something that we have to fight for in our lives, and to hold on to.

Our friend Eimear Lynch, who’s a photographer, had recently gone to Ireland and photographed the process of girls getting ready for a night out. It was this very traditional Irish thing where they put on the fake tan and they get all ready and they’ll just be going down to the junior disco or something. But there’s something unique to that. There’s a ritual there, and it’s a coming-of-age thing. It’s not something that lasts forever in their lives, but it is there, it’s a moment and there’s something romantic to that. There’s something sentimental about that period and that discovery of the self that’s in line with our album.

“Romance is something that we have to fight for in our lives, and to hold on to” – Conor Deegan

Luna Carmoon: There’s the romance of girls and their friendship and the real goodness of that. But also, falling in love with becoming the version of yourself that you want to be seen as. Sometimes that can be ugly and people can fear what they don’t understand, and sometimes you can’t see that love within yourself without someone else seeing it. 

Especially as a teenage girl, when you’re beginning to learn that you should hate this about yourself and you’re examining the way you look 24/7, it’s so exhausting. I loved watching the Riot Grrrl’s growing up and Bikini Kill and the Dirty Girls documentary and just feeling like: ‘I’m a dirty girl. I’m a gross girl, I’m ugly’, and leaning into that. The song made me feel like that.

THE INFLUENCE OF TEENAGE GIRLHOOD

Luna Carmoon: It’s so nice to see girls be ugly, whether they’re hyper-feminine, or they dress more masculinely. I just love seeing girls be ugly. In the fight scene, there’s no slapping, there’s no hair pulling. They’re punching, they’re violent. They’re like dogs with lockjaw, they’re not giving up. 

It made me feel like how I felt with my teenage best friend. If we were getting on a bus at night we kind of wanted someone to start on us so we could start on them too. It’s giving that female energy to me, that lairy ‘don’t fucking start on us just because we’re teenage girls because we’ll have you for dinner.’

Conor Deegan: I think it contrasts the expectations of what that video would be. I think another band would probably have done something very typically masculine or abrasive. And I think the video actually is abrasive, but in a less typical way. It shows the developing personalities of young women and how they clash with each other, and it was great to be able to show that. 

THE STYLING

Luna Carmoon: There’s a Spanish punk singer called Ana Curra, who was a big inspiration for [Jennifer’s] final look. We also spoke about Jennifer being a lot like Carrie, that her mum is strict and she probably has underwear that has days of the week on it, like Virgin Suicides, and she probably is not allowed to express herself. 

The Lost Boys was another big one. We spoke about how the characters influenced the way that they dress. If it was Twilight, Snake is Alice. She’s the baby, she’s soft, she‘s very dreamlike, she’s otherworldly and sweet. Goat is the brute, Goat wants to disrupt the room and they do that physically with their armour. They have the most Alex Remier outfit in terms of The Lost Boys. 

Bird is my ringleader, very wise and quiet but fierce in the way she dresses. We wanted her to feel full of feathers so she’s got these really interesting pieces that Lucy James [the costume designer] found. Cat was slinky and shy but quite punk.

THE TAKEAWAY MESSAGE 

Conor Deegan: I’d like people to take away this concept of transformation, in finding yourself and finding the freedom to be yourself. The main character in the video, even in her transformation, still keeps her passion. She keeps her romance, and she discovers more things about herself. I feel like we’re undergoing a transformation right now ourselves, and we want to be able to bring our listeners along for the ride with us.

Luna Carmoon: I just wanted to elicit that feeling of how I felt watching music videos as a teenager: seeing someone who makes you feel like you can be the version of yourself that you wanted is always quite sickening and plenty of music videos had that effect on me growing up. They made me want to go to school the next day dressed ugly and fierce. You accept yourself in a different kind of way and it gives you some sort of power.