MGMT unveil the brand new release, "Nothing To Declare"

Following on from the release of "Bubblegum Dog", and "Mother Nature", MGMT return with the brand new single, "Nothing To Declare", which is also set to feature on their forthcoming fifth studio album, Loss of Life.

The song is accompanied by an official video, directed by Joey Frank (MGMT’s “Me & Michael”) and starring Inga Petry, a student at the University of Pittsburgh where she studies philosophy and pre-law who uses her growing social media platform to spread awareness for the disabled community. Director Joey Frank discovered Petry through her TikTok, which she utilizes to share with others the way she lives her life despite her differences and difficulties she faces, with the intention of learning from one another’s differences.

Frank spoke about the video’s concept, saying “When I first saw Inga on TikTok, I imagined her as the star of a foreign film. A certain brand of 1990’s European independent cinema typified by the Dardenne brothers always essentially follows a human navigating through life. Inga has been armless all her life, which lends a different kind of vulnerability to the simple narrative of a self possessed young woman traveling from Pittsburgh to Paris. In real life, Inga puts herself online in a very candid way on TikTok, but the "Nothing to Declare" MGMT music video plays on the aesthetics of independent cinema to allow the audience a different sort of emotional fictive space with Inga as ingenue.”

"When I was first approached by Joey to do this project, it was the parallelism in his vision that first drew me in. We listened to ‘Nothing To Declare’ as he took me through the concept of the video and I was met with the juxtaposition of beauty and melancholy. Having grown up with no arms, I have been watched my whole life," adds Inga Petry.

"In some respects, the Venus de Milo has always felt analogous to my life, and specifically to the character I portray in this film. She’s adored, respected, and almost constantly surrounded by people, and yet she stands alone and her past is unknown. There have always been questions surrounding her arms and she has never had to answer or prove her worth. From my perspective, she has nothing to declare. Playing this character that is different, and not just because she doesn’t have arms, but by the way she handles the difference and still feeds on new curiosity was a really beautiful experience.”

MGMT worked on the ten-track Loss Of Life with producer Patrick Wimberly (Beyoncé, Lil Yachty) and longtime collaborator Dave Fridmann (The Flaming Lips, Spoon), who mixed the album as he has done on the group’s past four full-lengths. Loss Of Life is the long-awaited follow-up to 2018’s Little Dark Age.