Indie rock band Mike Mains & the Branches is preparing to release their third studio album, When We Were In Love, with Tooth & Nail Records on April 5th. The band recently partnered with Substream Magazine to premiere the new single and official music video for "Breathing Underwater."
The song, much like the rest of the album, comes from a deeply personal place as founding members Mike Mains and Shannon Briggs struggled through a rough season in their marriage and then experienced joy in rebuilding the relationship through counseling. "I finally felt brave enough to explore that pain, and a lot of this record feels like someone eavesdropping," Mains shares. "The song eavesdrops on some of my therapy sessions. In therapy we talked a lot about kintsugi and so that helped inspire a lot of things on the album, including the album art and some of the things in this video as well. It's a song about forgiveness and regret and it's kind of a big fat apology."
"We wanted to play around with symbolism and play on the relationships throughout the album. Shannon and Robbie, our drummer and the director for the video, took the lead on it. We wanted to capture the tension and brokenness in failing relationships, whether it's a lover or just a friend. The imagery I had while writing the song was from this Zach Braff movie called 'The Last Kiss'. He sleeps on the porch for like three nights, begging his wife for forgiveness and his wife takes him back," Mains explains of the music video.
