Video of the Week: ioakim, ‘swimming pools’

Bedroom producer ioakim is here to get summer started with the music video for his dreamy new single ‘swimming pools’.  

Drowning in melancholy, suffused with an earnest sense of nostalgia, ioakim’s track could soundtrack Sad Summer. The shimmering guitar-driven rhythm recalls the poignancy of Passion Pit or the verve of Phoenix.

The infectious indie pop track is more than matched by an energetic clip. It sees ioakim singing and playing guitar in – you guessed it – a swimming pool. The guitar in the video was retrieved on a road trip with friends and was refurbished to near pristine condition, before the producer decided to throw it into water after all that.

Ioakim created the artwork by himself and the vision for the video came easily to him, bubbling up from his unconscious mind. Drawing on his previous experiences, ioakim looked to the future on ‘swimming pools’, considering his personal growth and aspirations.

“Now my mind is racing / But my feet won’t move an inch / If I had it my own way / I’d just wake up next to you one day,” he sings, capturing the trapped feeling of falling for someone but not knowing what to do about it.

“Swimming pools is about capturing the ultimate summer nostalgia,” ioakim said. “Written last year, it explores themes of love and relationships, encompassing the blissful feeling of being with someone you love.

This wasn’t a literal theme for me, it was more an exaggerated/dreamt up feeling that lived in the back of my mind. Swimming pools was a way for me to look forward to summer with friends after a long winter of lockdowns.”

Ioakim’s latest single follows the equally dreamy and breezy ‘tongue tied’, which was released earlier this year.

For more on this topic, follow the Indie Observer.

Check out ‘swimming pools’ by ioakim:

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.

Subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine

Subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine