If you thought the retro Wildflower vibe could get any better, 5SOS DIY-ed a hypnotic music video pulled straight from 1996 – and it’s great.

Just before the release of their fourth album, CALM, 5 Seconds Of Summer released Wildflower as their next single with a beautifully done stop-motion lyric video. The “summer anthem we all deserve” channels 80s and 90s pop and delivers the catchiest ear-worm of a chorus on the album. To hype the song up even further, the band remotely came together with their director Andy DeLuca, assistant director Sarah Eiseman, and a frequently sanitized green screen to produce a follow up to the lyric video. What came out of it was spellbindingly psychedelic. Watching the bright colours shift and the hand-drawn doodles grow on the screen feels like the noughties threw up everywhere. Add in 5SOS’ inherent goofiness and the Wildflower music video becomes a charming addition to the band’s videography.

On directing the video, Andy Deluca said:

Our original plan consisted of a big budget, a full crew, and a giant studio, but it was cancelled due to coronavirus and we were forced to make something under the challenging conditions of quarantine. Michael had a green screen sitting in his closet, so I figured that could be enough to make something. Since the song has a pretty distinct 80s/90s tone, I came up with the idea of making an 80’s/90’s MTV-style music video. A ‘music-video-themed music video’. The stuff I grew up on and loved. So we passed around the disinfected green screen (with the help of our teammate Kat Gallagher), and everyone filmed their parts at home with an iPhone and later sent the footage over to me. In the meantime, Sarah Eiseman and I began working on the art for the video. We quickly learned animation and drew up several blooming flowers, and also created the trippy colored backgrounds using milk and food dye. I then spent the next couple of days/nights editing nonstop until my eyes bled and the video was completed. It definitely has pushed us to create something  we normally wouldn’t, using only our brains and our hands.

CALM is out now via Polydor Records.