Brainwasher – ‘At Least It Beats an Actor’

Exclusive Premiere: Brainwasher debuts surreal single and video ‘At Least It Beats an Actor’

Brainwasher image via Blake Studdard

July 18, 2025

Featuring members of The Flaming Lips, Brainwasher shares their debut single—a chaotic, neo-noir trip-hop track ahead of debut LP 39 Lightyears from Heaven.

Today marks the exclusive premiere of ‘At Least It Beats an Actor,’ the hypnotic debut single and video from Brainwasher, the Oklahoma City-based duo of Matthew Duckworth Kirksey and Tommy McKenzie. Known for their work with The Flaming Lips, Miley Cyrus, Beachy Head, and more, the two seasoned musicians introduce their long-awaited full-length project with a genre-warping trip-hop cut directed by Wayne Coyne and Blake Studdard.

‘At Least It Beats an Actor’ is a sensory overload of rhythm and texture. A distorted collision of psychedelic rock, industrial edge, and postmodern pop sensibility, the track blends bass-heavy grooves, reverberating guitar lines, and drum machine hi-hats into an intoxicating whole. With lyrics that dissect the absurdity of artistic identity and labor, Brainwasher frames the song as a meditation on what it means to be a creator — or to collaborate with one—in today’s chaotic world.

Matthew Duckworth Kirksey and Tommy McKenzie describe it in appropriately maximalist terms:

“It’s freakier than a Diddy party, it’s louder and wetter than a thunderstorm, more suspenseful than the Golden Gate Bridge, scarier than an El Salvadorian prison, more influential than religion. Who needs Habeas Corpus when you have this video? Did we understand the assignment or fail so spectacularly the assignment changed?”

The accompanying video (below), directed by Wayne Coyne (The Flaming Lips) and Blake Studdard, transforms that chaos into a visual representation. It’s a fever dream of surreal images and disorienting energy.

Brainwasher’s debut album, 39 Lightyears from Heaven, is out October 24 via Mothland.

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