Having been friends since middle school, during which time they bonded over a love of music before deciding to pursue it professionally, having toured relentlessly prior to the Corona Virus pandemic and with support behind them from the likes of Billboard, Wonderland and American Songwriter among others, Evan Friedell, Aaron Gorsch and Packy Lunn – AKA Jimkata – have certainly made an impression on both critics and music fans during their time together.

This Spring, they’ll drop their highly anticipated seventh album titled Bonfires – their first full length release in over four years – but prior to that, PopWrapped are delighted to premiere their new single “Liar With The Lights On”, and its video.

Asked about the inspiration to the song and the creative process behind the video, Evan says: “This song started as a simple, fun bass groove but by the time I got the idea for the chorus, I knew something more sinister was boiling underneath. It’s pretty clear we’ve been living in an era of lies, misinformation, delusions and mass deception and it was hard to not let that seep into my psyche and therefore the music. I’ve always been inspired by artists like The Police who often paired poppy upbeat music with darker lyrical themes as well as classic reggae artists like The Wailing Souls, Steel Pulse, Third World and of course Bob Marley and Peter Tosh who often sang about deep political or moral issues set to an uplifting beat.  I couldn’t help but follow in that path a little bit with this song, imagining a character who by day deals in lies but by night fears his reckoning. Ultimately, it’s sort of a moral tale set to a shiny dance groove.  

For the video, we teamed up with an old friend of ours, Greg Ellis, who has been the lighting designer for Pretty Lights for several years now. He’s been exploring analog video art and has a variety of tools at his disposal to create something visually stunning. We sent him shots of us in time lapse and he projected it onto a fog screen in an actual room full of 300 lasers and ultimately created something that toys with the idea of an image not being as it seems on the surface.”

Check out “Liar With The Lights On” below and for more information on Jimkata, visit their website, give their page a like on Facebook or follow them on Twitter.