Most fantasies of quitting preserve some faith in manners: a resignation letter, a slammed drawer, a final walk past reception. Mighty Crimes tears through that decorum with a workplace homicide and a car pointed toward open country. Yet escape does not clear the mind. The office recedes while the argument continues in the driver’s seat, where relief, panic, and self-justification take turns holding the wheel.
London post-punk band Blow Dry, the project conceived and led by Sydney-born frontwoman Genevieve Welsh, have shared their off-kilter video for Mighty Crimes. Released on July 28 and co-written with Jorge Elbrecht—whose credits include Japanese Breakfast, Sky Ferreira, and Angel Olsen—the song turns an under-the-breath workplace fantasy into fugitive comedy. Sick of corporate life, a woman kills her boss, runs for the horizon, and gradually loses command of her own explanation.
A spring-loaded bass line opens the track, with clipped guitar accents and post-punk jangles darting around percussion that carries the fleet, slightly camp momentum of a 1960s heist score. An eerie rising-and-falling figure, poised somewhere between an organ buzz and a guitar whine, keeps the floor tilted beneath Welsh’s theatrical delivery. Her voice purrs, quivers, yelps, and steadily pushes toward the edge as each repetition makes the character sound less convinced by her own defence.
Welsh explains:
“On the surface it’s a relatable laugh – ugh, I want to kill my boss – I mean, how many people have said that before?! But there are real emotions under the humour too: the freedom and release of throwing everything away and heading out into the unknown, tangled up with the anxiety of ‘what have I done,’ and then comes the self-talk you do to convince yourself that yes you were right to make the choices you’ve made… whether you actually were or not. Or at least, that’s the mental olympics my brain goes through.
It’s such a playful track combined with the Blow Dry dark humour – as soon as we recorded it I could see the imagery – a Thelma & Louise meets Tarantino meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert getaway film, but set in the Australian outback. An off-kilter homage to my homeland.”
Speaking with Eliot Odgers for Still Listening Magazine, Welsh said that writing through a fictional character “let me detach and have more fun.” The small crew followed a similar instinct while filming in Western Australia: “No permissions, a rough plan, and the rest we were winging.”
Directed by Blair Gauld, with cinematography by Ryan Murphy and grading by Spike Luke Wright, the video carries the song’s office-crime premise into the red vastness surrounding Kalgoorlie. Welsh’s outlaw stands against burnt-orange earth and an immense blue sky, her white clothing and wind-tossed hair cutting across the Goldfields landscape.
The Coolgardie Caravan Park and Broad Arrow Tavern anchor the getaway in a specific corner of Western Australia. Meat pies, a Bunnings hat, skimpy-bar culture, and other slices of Australiana bring homesick affection and dry comedy to the flight. With only three people travelling and filming, the clip retains the looseness of its production: a desert crime picture assembled through roadside encounters, local generosity, and the willingness to see what might happen next.
Watch the video for Mighty Crimes below:
Blow Dry brings Welsh’s background in fashion and love of cinema into a theatrical strain of post-punk informed by punk rock, new wave, and gothic rock. The group’s recent single MR. BIG introduced its more confrontational side through an aggressive, dance-led performance video; Mighty Crimes widens the frame into character-driven film and black comedy. Alongside stylist Matt King, Welsh also runs Tainted Pleasure, a Blitz Club-inspired night held at The Social in London.
Mighty Crimes is out now. Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.
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