From the first notes of “Get Lost!”, a hypnotic beat sets in — dark, propulsive, and strangely inviting. The track pulls us into Mercy Land’s world with a mischievous wink and doesn’t let go. The song is a wild ride — a little dark, a little twisted — shifting gears across genres, tempos, and emotions. It’s an alt-dance track that pulls you into its own uncanny rhythm and doesn’t let up.
This is the second single from the dynamic darkwave/synthpop duo composed of Laura Jinn and Tatum Gale, known together as Mercy Land, released via Feature Bug Studios — and we’re excited to premiere the official video for you today.
Directed by Virginia Walcott, the video continues the visual story first introduced with “Kid A,” expanding the surreal world of the upcoming Termites EP, due out this fall. Shot in vivid, coin-operated colors, the video moves between retro-futurist sets and lo-fi digital dreamscapes. Tatum plays the role of an untrustworthy internet cowboy, “jacked up on creatine,” and not quite what he seems, while Laura Jinn guides us through a second-person narrative full of fickle romanticism, beginning with an accusation: “Tease!”
The two protagonists seem trapped in a strange blend of virtual and physical reality. Though they share the same space, their interaction unfolds only through imagination and chat messages — or does it?
“Get Lost!” is part theater noir, part house party fever dream — and we’re already fully immersed in its captivating sound and surreal visuals.
We caught up with Mercy Land to talk about the video, the EP, and the strange little love story behind it all.
Photography by Mia Teresa
Nice having you for an interview! So — let’s get lost in your new single. (smiles) Where do you usually find yourself getting lost — in love, in a song, or in yourself?
(Tatum) Thanks for having us :) Such a fun Q. I love getting lost pretty much anytime, anywhere. The sensation of timewarp when you’re so focused on a thread or when you lose your bearings – that thrill is fun to me I think no matter how scary. You can get lost at a club or out on the town, like lose your friends or whatever, and it can be an adrenaline rush even though it’s unnerving. I find myself lost in music all the time, actually it’s a lostness that I seek every time I’m writing or producing, and it’s one of the best sensations in listening as well, being so inside the feeling of the song that you disappear briefly.
Your music blends so many different worlds — dream pop, darkwave, dance. How do songs usually begin for you? With a feeling, a beat, or something else entirely?
(Tatum) Yeah, we’ve had a number of songwriting sprints where we’ve tried out different methods. I think different starting places yield vastly different results, like writing at the piano is a gut feeling comfortable thing for me, but it tends to give me a certain type of song that isn’t always a Mercy Land song.
Some of the songs on this EP started with live jams using drum machines and sequencers, so with Get Lost! it’s the four-on-the-floor from the TR-8s and some melodic percussion sounds from the SE-02 that provided the backdrop for our writing. Beat came first, song after.
(Laura) But most of the time it’s a little melodic or lyrical germ and/or an image, a feeling or a memory that we play with a guitar or piano or synth or sampled drums until it’s starting to fit a larger structure, sparking production ideas, feeling like it could be a song. Early in the songwriting process we’ll enter the production stage in the DAW and try to have a demo done by the end of the session. One of our things is “go as far as you can now” because you want your future self to see a fleshed out idea when they return to it to take it to the next stage.
The video for “Get Lost” is a futuristic, color-drenched mix of visuals — tell us the story behind it, and what was the creative process like bringing it to life?
(Laura) We started by building the sets in our house with our friend and collaborator, Virginia Walcott. I was a strange and lonely child. My bedroom, the family desktop computer – these were portals to new dimensions. The sets were a way of capturing those feelings of magic and romance. We spent months ideating, building, and living within them. They are the stars of the show. Once the music came together, I wrote the script for a full film to accompany it. We spent a week of chaotic late nights filming in our room. It was grueling but so fun – just staying up all night with your besties getting dreamy.
“We didn’t know anyone else who wanted to make what we wanted to make. So we learned together.”
Would you say the video reflects your own relationship to technology and online identity?
(Laura) My earliest experiences online were in fandom communities on Livejournal and Tumblr. Logging on was thrilling. It was a point of access to a world beyond. Being online now is so constant and integrated into daily life, there’s no mystery, just anxiety and extraction. I wanted to capture the beauty that I experienced and to render it in a way that was familiar but new. I hope these experiences are not just in our past, but in a future that we can create.
(Tatum) It’s also about stranger danger a little bit. So what rules are we supposed to follow when we log on? I play this mysterious character, Tantrum, who Laura meets, and it’s like, why am I there in the room all of a sudden?
If it had a hidden message, what would it be?
(Laura) Let’s destroy the tools that don’t serve us and create a world with all the magic we deserve.
So, this is your second single, but does it still feel a bit like a debut in some ways—like you’re still carving out your sound and identity? How long did you work on this one, and what did the process teach you about yourselves?
(Tatum) Totally. This is part of our debut EP, but we’ve been writing and producing music together for years. Mercy Land was a natural product of our longtime collaboration, and it feels very right to us, but still it encompasses a lot of different feelings, genres, sounds, etc. I don’t know exactly our relationship to dance music other than that we want to make it. Get Lost! is definitely a lesson to us about making dance music.
The EP includes 5 songs and they’re each reaching into a different direction. I do like all the directions, haha. So it’s maybe ambitious, but we care about making breakbeat, darkwave, house, techno, post-punk, trip hop, sleaze, alternative, whatever, with the hope that genre disintegrates into Mercy Land.
To give you an answer to the amount of time we worked on it, I went back to our original file and then our master and the final video export. So in total, 10 months.
(Laura) I just wanted a fun song for the EP, something bratty for the summer.
“Let’s destroy the tools that don’t serve us and create a world with all the magic we deserve.”
How did you two first start making music together?
(Laura) We didn’t know anyone else who wanted to make what we wanted to make. Sadly we didn’t know how to do it, but we learned together.
What does success look like for Mercy Land — now, and in five years?
(Laura) Making music that changes people’s lives – that opens them up to themselves, each other, the world. Playing and collaborating with artists who care deeply and push hard. Building a community that can dance and cry and scream together.
(Tatum) Yes, exactly.
Lastly — what feels like the most important thing in life to you right now?
(Tatum) Dismantling age-old systems of oppression. Slicing up ICE. Growing into new modes of expression that bypass capitalistic greed.
(Laura) Amen <3
www.instagram.com/thankgodformercyland
