This Friday Sydney punk trio Bloods will release their anticipated full-length album Together, Baby! (Share It Music). Today the band is pleased to present the official video for “Radical” the final pre-release single lifted from the upcoming album. 

The striking video is a visual exploration of Romina Pistolas and thereby other Latin migrants in Australia going through similar experiences and feelings as her. Pistolas is Chilean and migrated to Australia eight years ago in search of safety and financial security. Like Bloods’ frontwoman Marihuzka Cornelius, her immigration is the result of political exile from their South American homeland. Pistolas is a proud stripper and a symbol of an empowered independent woman charting her own course. 

Following a day in Pistolas’ life, “Radical” video explores what it’s like to be a Chilean migrant living in Melbourne by subtly and poetically presenting the complexity of empowerment and safety while staying true to one’s past and roots. Pistolas, also a writer, has a book due out this year in which she discusses her struggle reconciling her cultural identity and navigating taboos while growing up in Australia and advocating for safety and de-stigmatizing the sex work industry.

Video director Triana Hernandez says:

When Bloods asked me to create a music video for “Radical,” I  got excited to create a subversive political video, something true to my experience as a latin migrant and my community. The song is refreshing because it’s political but has a very upbeat brass section, and this element inspired me to create a video with a similar vibe – a depiction of a migrant that’s not suffering or proving their worth to be living here, but enjoying their freedom unapologetically instead.

My friend Romina Pistolas, a Chilean migrant who is a proud stripper and writer, was the perfect person to explore this with. She’s one of the most empowered women I know despite her backstory. We workshopped the concept together, she told me every detail of her day-to-day life and we soon realised that the most powerful moments of freedom for us latina migrants is things like eating a kebab late at night without fearing for our lives,  working hard but also having lots of time to rest and unwind. Amidst these conversations we realised that the video is about the every-day subtle politics of a migrant woman who has found the things all of our abuelas were fighting for; freedom to rest, relax, walk freely down the streets, earn good money and exist safely, without being attacked, hassled or judged by society for being simply us.