Every time we catch up with singer, actor, model, and dancer Indi Star, she is up to something new. From the runways of New York Fashion Week to the sets of movies and TV shows, Indi’s creativity branches into so many projects. Lately, Indi has been diving deeper into her music, slowly releasing songs as she works on crafting the sound she wants.
Just last month Indi released “Hurt a Little,” a retrospective breakup song with a bit of an edge and a music video to match. From the ways that her real-life experiences and relationships bleed into “Hurt a Little” to the set design of her music video bedroom, we had to get all of the little details on this project.
Indi calls “Hurt a Little” her favorite of her recent song releases and sees it as a marker of her growing comfort with her music. She wants to fully understand what she likes and doesn’t like as she works on new projects. “I’m getting a lot more comfortable and more used to my voice.” With this comfort, she’s looking at new genres. While she’s been in a semi-dark pop exploration phase, she wants to try out folk music sounds and even try to write some more uplifting songs.
She does love the revenge Indi we often see in the visuals for her songs. “In real life, I kind of express my anger in sadness, I guess. If I get angry at someone and I’m trying to have a conversation with them, I won’t yell. I’ll just start crying,” she shared. “It’s really fun to put all of the anger I can’t express into my music.” Her favorite songs are driven by strong emotions and passion, and tapping into that unexpressed frustration and anger is part of what gives her music real life.
“Hurt a Little” is one of those songs. “I’d say it wasn’t based on one person specifically. It was kind of based on a couple of different friendships and relationships and kind of mixed all of those feelings into one song,” Indi shared. She takes inspiration from many areas of her life rather than writing about her feelings on one person. She told us that this may change one day, but for now, she thinks that versatility is part of what lets her make music that people can connect to.
This is a song about transferring one person’s mental and emotional pain to the person that hurt them, but Indi doesn’t seem to feel that way about people who have hurt her. She credits her family for being a great support system she can turn to in hard times and has the mindset that “Everything that happens is meant to be. If somebody wants to walk away, you have to let them.” Processing those feelings doesn’t always look so peaceful in song, though. That’s where music video Indi comes in.
Even in fiction, Indi isn’t great at anger and frustration. She revealed that even though a voodoo doll is a major feature in the “Hurt a Little” music video, damaging the doll to make her co-star Blake Manning “hurt a little” was hard for her to get through at times. Smashing the doll with a hammer was a particular moment that made her break. “Behind the scenes of all the video takes are me laughing in between takes because I could not stay in character. It was really funny.” Despite this, she loves the physicality scenes like these give to the video and music. She managed to push through and pull off a much more serious look in the final cut.
The inspiration for the “Hurt a Little” video was “campy 90s horror movie.” From the title card to the teen bedroom set to Indi’s revenge against the boy who breaks her heart over text message (something she hasn’t experienced but liked for the video), the video worked to translate the emotional hurt Indi sings about into something physical and visual. “Anything 90s I love. I love Halloween. I’ve never done a scary type of thing, but I wanted to make it kind of spooky.” It’s exciting to see the horror of heartbreak played up this way.
Did you know? If Indi could add “Hurt a Little” to any horror movie soundtrack, she’d love to see it as part of a chase scene in Chucky or in one of the Scream movies!
With such big emotions on screen, “Hurt a Little” is very contained. The set designers brought to life a teen bedroom where Indi could work through her on-screen breakup. The whole room ended up reminding her a lot of her own colorwise, and she immediately fell in love with the vanity that was placed there. “I looked out how they designed the desk, and I copied that for my actual desk in my room because I loved it so much.” Outside of the bedroom, simple colored scenes and the cutaways to Blake fill in the rest of the video.
Indi has been loving the support she’s received from friends and fans with this release. “Hurt a Little” is Indi’s second song of 2023, and she enjoys this slow production schedule. “I also like taking my time and actually making sure I love the song that I released,” she said, sharing that she would like to release another song before the end of the year. “I don’t love only staying in the breakup song genre because I have more stories to tell.”
