Doechii‘s “Anxiety” music video is like a dream come true — but not a good one.
The video, which arrived Friday (April 18), starts out totally normal, with Doechii working on music on her bed — a visual callback to the setting of her old Coven Music Sessions, from which “Anxiety” originated in 2019. But then, a S.W.A.T. team confusingly breaks through the windows of her house, after which things begin to spiral into a panic-inducing nightmare sequence featuring the Florida rapper avoiding creepy stares from home invaders, frantically trying to extinguish a fire that breaks out in her kitchen, and eventually running outside for a dance break on the street as a swarm of neighbors slowly closes in on her.
“Anxiety, keep on trying me/ Feel it quietly, tryna silence me, yeah,” she sings in the song’s hook. “Anxiety, shake it off of me/ Somebody’s watching me.”
Originally shared in a 2019 YouTube video, “Anxiety” — which heavily samples Gotye’s 2011 smash “Somebody That I Used to Know” — didn’t find its way to streaming services until Doechii finally officially released the track in March. It reached its current Billboard Hot 100 peak at No. 10 that month, marking the musician’s first-ever top 10 hit.
The Swamp Princess’ James Mackel-directed project also pays direct tribute to Gotye, with the artist at one point looking over to see a man and woman done up in geometric body paint to match a wall in the house — a direct homage to the “Somebody That I Used to Know” music video.
The video comes eight months after the release of Doechii’s career-shifting mixtape Alligator Bites Never Heal, which ascended to No. 12 on the Billboard 200 shortly after making the star only the third woman to ever win best rap album at the Grammys. In March, she was honored as Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards.
Watch the “Anxiety” music video above.
