Caroline Polachek Is Bringing Back Pirate Style for Her Latest Video

If you couldn’t guess from Caroline Polachek’s Instagram feed, which is littered with psychedelic videos of Polachek posing in a fur coat and a white spider-brooch while her face melts, or a selfie on the bus with a third eye peering out from the center of her forehead, she’s a fan of the surreal. This was made very apparent in the otherworldly video she released for her recent single, “Door,” wherein she quite literally opens up a door into another, Tolkien-esque, universe; and now, with her new video for “Ocean of Tears,” she’s inhabiting another alternative world as a pirate sailing the stormy Atlantic seas.

At the start of Polachek’s new visual, she’s pictured dutifully scrubbing the deck of a ship, her hair splaying outward from a thick braid that snakes down her neck. She then surveys the ocean from a high lookout point on the ship, dressed in tan boots, a cream-colored corset and peasant top by recent Parsons graduate and designer Elena Velez. Polachek wears Velez’s designs throughout the video—there’s another white corset moment and a hat covered in long nautical rope netting that gives the illusion of a veil—which is fitting given that Velez’s most recent collection, Vessel, is inspired by childhood memories of her single mother working as a ship captain in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (where she works to this day). The video was styled by Polachek herself, including the pirate hat covered in netting that the singer notes was inspired by a 2008 Jean Paul Gaultier collection, but recreated with flotsam and jetsam she personally sourced. Polachek may be on the lookout for her treasure, but she’s doing it in her own creative—and impressively resourceful—style.