A few years ago, I started to notice the disproportionate number of Florida license plates gracing cars on the streets of Brooklyn. And then I started noticing them everywhere else. “Florida Plates”—the first single from my 2024 LP The Present—is, on one level, just a bemused observation of this fact. But it’s also a meditation on the rise—and reach—of far-right Florida-based politicians like Ron DeSantis and, of course, Donald Trump. In the words of the song, “They’re everywhere now.”

After I saw the mind-bendingly brilliant video for Car Colors’ “Old Death” music video, I asked my friend Charles Bissell (the force behind Car Colors and, before that, front man for The Wrens) to make an introduction to its director, Kyle Garrett. Kyle, who ended up directing four videos for songs from The Present, told me he felt like the video should feel like “a road trip through dread.” Taking the form of a 1950s industrial film, the video showcases Garrett’s technical wizardry (evident in his mordant sense of humor to create an uncanny world where Florida plates are omnipresent.