Black Belt Eagle Scout – the recording project of multi-instrumentalist Katherine Paul – presents a video for “Run It to Ya,” the final pre-release single from her new album, At the Party With My Brown Friends, due this Friday, August 30th via Saddle Creek. Following “My Heart Dreams” and “At the Party,” “Run It to Ya” is about the gentleness of love and how wondrous it can feel at times from the point of view of a queer Indigenous womxn. The video was directed by Evan James Benally Atwood.

“It felt natural for the ‘Run It to Ya’ music video to star queer Indigenous womxn and show their love story unfold. The setting is a queer Indigenous prom, a space where we can truly be ourselves without the ridicules of white settler colonialism. It’s a realm where we can reimagine what our lives look like as queer Indigenous people; what is normally a heteronormative space turns into a magical place where people have the freedom to safely love how they choose.

Throughout my work, I intend to show the thriving lives of Indigenous people, and how we are often excluded from mainstream rock music and the media. This exclusion is detrimental to our health and our existence. I am trying to show what my life is like so that other people can see how we have the right to thrive in this world and have the ability to decolonize.”

Where her 2018 debut, Mother of My Children, was a snapshot of loss and landscape and of Paul’s standing as a radical Indigenous queer feminist, this new chapter finds its power in love, desire and friendship. At the Party With My Brown Friends is a profound and understated forward step. The squalling guitar anthems that shaped its predecessor are replaced by delicate vocals and soft keys, sentiments spoken and unspoken, presenting something shadowy and unsettling; a stirring of the waters. The end result presents a captivating about-face that redefines Paul’s beautifully singular artistic vision.