Exclusive: Lukas Haas Talks His New Single and Must-Watch Music Video

Lukas Haas Critiques Instagram culture with his new single, “She’s in my Head” and its accompanying video

Lukas Haas, an indie-rock musician and actor, best known for his work in films like Inception, Mars Attacks!, 24, and The Revenant has just debuted a new music video and original song as part of his upcoming EP, in which he critiques today’s social media obsession using Iphone’s screen record feature. The video for his new song, “She’s In My Head” was directed with a friend, Ariel Vromen, though Haas developed the original concept himself. Though this was his first time directing, the social-media-savvy video is innovative and clever, and sure to resonate with its viewers, specifically millennials. The song itself officially hit Itunes and Spotify on January 16th, and the video features model Tess Jantschek, with cameos by actors, Brandon Thomas Lee, Vincent Laresca, and DJ Pookie, among others. In the video, Lukas weaves a tale of Instagram obsession; his lyrics detail the all too familiar situation of being unable to shake someone out of our thoughts and fighting the urge to watch their every move on social media.

I caught up with Lukas to hear about the inspiration behind his new single and music video which was filmed at LA hotspot Hyde Sunset:

The Knockturnal: I wanted to ask you first about your background in music. I know you toured with Outkast at a point and you had your own band?

Lukas Haas: Yeah, I met some guys around Andre and I don’t even know quite honestly how it happened but Andre was like “Yo, you should be in the video for Roses” so we did the song together and then they did a whole tour of that song. So we toured around and played that song at a bunch of events and it was a wild experience.

The Knockturnal: And then did you keep playing music? Or did you take a break to focus on acting?

Lukas Haas: I actually got into music really, really early, even before I started acting. And then acting happened for me, so I was working as a kid… but I got my first drum set at age 9 and my first keyboard a couple years after that. And then I got a guitar when I was 17, so I was always learning and playing and writing songs, and I was in a couple bands when I was in high school. I was living in Austin at the time and I used to play with my bands out there. So I’ve always been playing and writing but it was something that I meant to do in a real substantial way, and it was always a passion that I wanted to pursue. So around 6 or 7 years ago I decided to build a little studio and just devote most of my time to that. I still do acting when it comes up, but music is time-consuming because these songs, specifically “She’s in my Head,” I wrote and produced and played all of the instruments for.

The Knockturnal: Tell me a little bit about the inspiration behind your new song.

Lukas Haas: I was trying to have a conversation with my buddy, but he was freaking out about this girl and kept refreshing his phone, and I knew that feeling he was feeling. I wanted to write a song about that moment where you first meet someone and you’re kind of freaking out, and you’re not sure if they’re ever going to text you back or if you’re the only one that likes them. So that was what I wrote the song about, and the idea was there already, but it took me about six months after having written and produced the song to think of the video. At first I met with a couple of people about directing a video for the song because I just felt like there was potential but I couldn’t figure it out. So I met some people and although they were all throwing out cool ideas nothing quite resonated for me. But one day my friend sent a little screen record she had done to explain something to me and I was like, “What is that?!” She explained it to me, and a couple weeks later I put two and two together and I knew this was the video. And all of a sudden it just made sense.

The Knockturnal: So you directed it right?

Lukas Haas: Yes, I directed it and my friend co-directed it with me. His name is Ariel Vromen and he’s incredible. It was my first time directing and I really needed the guidance so it was really helpful to have him work with me.

The Knockturnal: And how long did it take you to complete?

Lukas Haas: Well gosh, from recording to completing the video it took almost a year. And that’s because although the song was done, I didn’t have the video for a long time. It’s funny because at first I didn’t know what was going to go into the video, I just knew he had to meet the girl and I needed to figure out how they would meet for the first time. The tricky part when you watch the video is understanding that when the guy goes back into his photos, he sees the video of how they met, when he was filming his dog and the girl bumps into his phone, and that was actually all my mom’s idea. Originally I was doing this whole boomerang thing to explain how they met but it didn’t really ring true. So I was telling my mom about a few different ideas I had and she is a super talented screenwriter and she was like, “ you should be filming something on your phone and she should bump into the phone” and I knew that was it. And that really made the whole thing, you know? Because then you get that personal connection.

The Knockturnal: What has the reaction to the song and video been like so far?

Lukas Haas: Well, you know the truth is I haven’t shown it to many people. I’ve shown it to my friends and they all love it, I’ve shown it to a couple people who really really flipped out over it, which is awesome, but I haven’t shown it to a wide group of people yet. I’ve probably only shown it to like 20 people.

The Knockturnal: Are you going to keep releasing music?

Lukas Haas: Yes, I have a full EP coming out this spring. I’ll be putting out a new song each month and although I’m not sure if I’ll have a video with each of them I’m gonna try to do as much of that as I can because I really enjoy it.

Lukas has played and toured with the band Outkast, for the release of their iconic single, “Roses,” which he performed on stage with the group on on Letterman, Good Morning America, and the BET Awards. He also had a band with Vincent Gallo called Bunny that toured Japan in the 90s, and opened for Macy Gray at Brixton Academy in London.