Montreal Goth-Folk Artist Flower Face Shares Video For “Pushing Daisies”

Today, Montreal goth-folk artist Flower Face (Ruby McKinnon) unveils the final offering from her latest album, Girl Prometheus, with the official music video for “Pushing Daisies.” Directed by McKinnon herself, the video actualizes the conflict between rationality and idealism.

In her own words, “Pushing Daisies is a conversation – or more like an argument – with myself: my rational side telling my romantic, passionate side that the way I’m seeking out these tumultuous kinds of love is unsustainable, and is only going to end in destruction. My overzealous heart is going to be the death of me, and I’ll be pushing up daisies in the end. I wanted the video to show this argument in a literal way – so we have the innocent, hopeful me in a white dress digging a hole to plant flowers and the sort of gloomy me bringing the warning (in the same outfit I wore in the Biblical Love video – because I’ve learned these lessons when I was chained up by my own desire). It ends with me burying myself and planting flowers over the grave.”

Elaborating on the process, Flower Face explains, “We filmed this in a field in the middle of nowhere, Ontario, around sunset in August. We had filmed Biblical Love that same afternoon, so I was already exhausted and covered in a layer of dried sweat from thrashing around for hours in a church that wasn’t air-conditioned. For some reason, we didn’t think about the bugs, and so filming Pushing Daisies was a real struggle: not only did we have to quickly dig a grave, but we were being swarmed by mosquitos and we only had an hour or so of the right kind of light — and I had to change outfits about ten times. I got back to my hotel room covered in dirt and bruises, but it was so much fun, and I love the way it turned out.”

WATCH & SHARE “PUSHING DAISIES”
https://youtu.be/q07LfN3s738

“Pushing Daisies” comes from Flower Face’s utterly raw, beautifully bittersweet fourth album, Girl Prometheus, about “the kind of heartbreak that nearly kills you.” Composed of vignettes that capture the stages of grief and what comes after, Girl Prometheus explores the elements in a cathartic and rapturous way – while she touches on the devastatingly sad she also reflects on why these intense emotions can make us feel the most alive. 

Following 2022’s critically acclaimed The Shark In Your Water, Girl Prometheus showcases 11 new tracks that each, in their own way, celebrate Ruby’s survival and revival. Whispered, acoustic moments intertwine with cinematic, room-filling compositions to form an album that is as intensely personal as it is relatable. 

Listen to Girl Prometheus on all digital retailers (here)

In conversation with Stereogum, Ruby admits that writing about breakups is hard because it can feel “almost embarrassing,” but that writing this new record kind of saved her. She wrote it out of that need to survive, not for anyone’s approval. Ruby shows us the good, the bad, and the ugly in a brave, cathartic effort. 

Produced by Marcus Paquin at Studio PM in Montreal and partially recorded offsite at a secluded lake house, Girl Prometheus as a title started out as a joke after Ruby and some friends went to the movies to see Oppenheimer. “There’s a quote at the beginning: ‘Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gave it to man; for this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity,’” Ruby says. “My friends would say, ‘You’re like Prometheus if he was a girl, because you’re being chained to a rock and tortured for eternity by your love. You stole love from the gods, you brought it to a man, and now you’re being tortured eternally.’”

Girl Prometheus might be suffused with pain, as its author fought to process an unexpected life shift, but it emerges victorious. Flower Face has grown new roots, and they are stronger than ever.