NV Music Video of the Day: EMA, "Take One Two"
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    If you know anything about Erika M. Anderson, and you should if you've watched our Face Time interview with her from last summer, you know that she's had a complicated relationship with her adopted home of California. Likewise, she's got mixed feelings about her native home of South Dakota - a can't live with it, can't live without it kind of thing. And yet, she clearly has a lot of love for her family and friends she grew up with there. For proof look no further than this priceless home video footage, for EMA's new single "Take One Two".

    The date stamp says it all -- shot in 1996, it's nothing more, but nothing less than a group of friends, high school outliers all, hanging out in a midwestern bedroom. There's dancing, there's drag, there's playing with an American flag, there's the tangible, beautiful bond of kids who were regularly, in Erika's own words,  "getting called names, shoved into lockers, and threatening to get our asses kicked for being queer or punk or just plain weird."

    Bullying is a virulent epidemic in this country that if anything seems to be getting worse, not better. Or maybe it's just that more people are talking about it, and working to stop it. Like The Jamie Isaacs Foundation (http://www.jamieisaacsfoundation.org) which strives to bring youth advocates into schools and pass antibullying legislation. It's named after a Long Island teenager who was bullied for seven years before switching schools.

    EMA is donating profits from sales of the single to the foundation. So buy it. And as you watch the awesome kids in our NV Music Video of the Day, "Take One Two", remember the words of a one-time-bullying-victim-turned-indie-rock-star: "This one's for all the weirdos out there: cherish your friends, fuck the haters and let your freak flag fly."

    Amen.

    Artist Tags: EMA