[Cover photo credit to Jake Owens]
London-based artist A.A. Williams has unveiled a new video for “The Veil,” taken from her third studio album, Solstice, which was released on June 5, 2026 via Reigning Phoenix Music. Built around piano and voice, the song “strips away the record’s heavier textures to reveal an unguarded portrait of longing, perseverance and the quiet pain of accepting what cannot be changed.”
Directed and filmed by Jake Owens, the accompanying film gives those emotions a dreamlike physical form. There is a “sense of movement suspended in time” and it “mirrors the vulnerability of the music.”
A.A. Williams reflects:
The Veil was always a bit of an outlier on Solstice, being the only stripped-back track on the record. A simple song, a song of trying your hardest, a song of yearning for change, a resignation to failure.
This video matches the song’s softness perfectly. It has a dreamlike quality that re-centres the meaning of the song for me, creating a hazy memory of a distant struggle. A gentle treatment of sorrowful moments, the delicately flowing material emphasises the vulnerability of the text with simple, quiet beauty.
The film’s weightless appearance was achieved through a special production process. Owens recorded Williams performing at double speed and shot at 60 frames per second so that the footage could be slowed by half while remaining synchronised with the song. Approximately 40 metres of fabric, five fans, a hair dryer and a leaf blower created the movement, with all effects captured live in camera rather than added digitally.
Owens explains:
The concept for the video came to me the first time I heard Solstice, something about this track jumped out as having potential for a cool music video. The pace of the song informed my idea that the video should be slow motion, with lots of dramatic movement from the various fabrics.
Following summer performances and appearances alongside A Perfect Circle, A.A. Williams returns to stages across the UK and Europe this winter supporting Chelsea Wolfe. The run begins November 21 in Utrecht and includes Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Oslo, Warsaw, Vienna, Paris and London, among other stop.
