“Ashes In the Water” is a song from Julius Smack’s latest EP, Serenity, out now on Leaving Records. It is a track about grief and omnipresent life in both the waking and dreaming worlds. The lyrics emerged from the summer of 2020, when the artist was quarantining on a lake, following the death of his uncle after a fast decline from alcoholism. One afternoon, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer at the water’s edge, he recalls a dream in which a man, in a plaid shirt in a motel room, sliced himself open with an axe. Then his skeleton walked out of his body.

The video was made in collaboration with Smack’s dear friend Emily Lucid, on the roof of the now-defunct performance space PAM in Highland Park where the artist regularly hosted performances before the pandemic.