Breakups are tough, particularly when they force us to take a hard look at ourselves and evaluate the less-than-healthy ways we’ve been existing.
Los Angeles-based producer Ducky brings this point to chromatic light on her track “A Place To Rest,” out Aug. 2 via Zeds Dead imprint Deadbeats. The dually ethereal and throttling song explores the emotional perils of life as a touring artist and remaining hung up on that person you used sleep next to back at home.
In the video, premiering exclusively on Billboard Dance below, Ducky digs deep into themes of self actualization — particularly as they relate to her own sobriety — through a series of symbolic moments incorporating glitter, a washing machine and melting duck candles. The producer celebrated four years free of drugs and alcohol on August 7, and the wisdom she’s derived from the accomplishment is readily apparent in her latest work.
“The song is really about learning about my patterns with relationships through recovery,” Ducky says, “kind of uncovering these painful recurring themes that show up time and again, and using this ex I fixated on whenever something ended as like, the vessel for that.”
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Here, in her own words, Ducky reveals the meaning behind a series of images from the video for “A Place To Rest.”
I love this shot. I’m waking up in all these colors with ducks melting around me, with their insides exposed. I’m inside a literal glass rainbow. There are colors everywhere. It’s the beginning of the video, and it’s my awakening to this world of color.
We take me out of the world of color pretty quickly though. This pink room is kind of like, my dreamland — there’s a thing in sobriety called a “pink cloud,” and it’s this really magical kind of natural high, usually in early sobriety, where everything just seems to be going great and is easy but it’s kind of… surface level. It’s not necessarily real, and it certainly doesn’t last. This room is my literal pink cloud.
I love the confetti shots because we bring the color back into my life so aggressively — it’s kind of inescapable, between that and the next still I chose where my eyes literally flash the colors. It’s such a beautiful thingm because there’s color everywhere, but it’s also kind of painful, you know, to lose that magical high feeling, because seeing the full picture involves seeing pain too, and the song is really not a happy song. It’s kind of tormented, [being] hung up on this person for years and years and never really letting them go, and recognizing that I come back to thinking about them every single time something ends.
I chose this one because it has the exact same meaning — I’m seeing the full color of the world. Only this time, it’s really not pretty and light, it’s kind of demonic and scary. You can see in the shots after; I look a bit tormented and my head is thrashing around. Things are breaking. But, you know, sometimes I’m smiling, and the things are filled with glitter. So it’s got the full range of emotions, which I love, because that’s life.
I chose this still for a few reasons: one, I just think it’s super cute! Two, there’s a bit of cheeky symbolism in there, because I thought it was really funny that we have the nod to sobriety, and there’s a washing machine in there. (Get it, I’m clean!…Sorry, I really like the dad jokes.) But there are a lot of circles tying the video together as well, and circles have so much symbolism as wholeness and totality.
I like this shot for a few reasons. One, it was just my sober birthday so it was kind of cute timing! But more importantly what this shot really symbolizes was like, lights out on the fantasy — the death of the pink cloud.
Finally, I love this shot of me with the white roses because it’s provides contrast to all of the brightness — I see it as the most delicate location of the video but also the strongest and most peaceful. It’s where I play the drums and like, express myself loudly, and it’s also where we land at the end of the video and I smile.