Unless you were living under a rock this past week, you probably heard that Skrillex released a new edit and video to his track “Stranger,” first featured on his debut album Recess in 2014. This new version features vocals from Tennyson and White Sea, and was released as a Christmas video of sorts.
What many people would not know is that the video was in production long ago before plans for it, and many other things, were derailed by the passing of Skrillex’s mother earlier this year. “My mom had passed away earlier this year right in the middle of us finishing the edit,” he told The Creators Project. As such, it became difficult to concentrate on work projects and he says the video sort of fell to the backburner. Skrillex still wanted to do something with it, though, and so the new challenge became how to make it relevant today.
A death, especially in the family, is challenging for very many reasons. Skrillex chose to harness this great emotional burden and channel it into something beautiful, the video that was released last week. “[I]t actually turned into something even more special.” 
With the aid of director Andrew Donoho, Skrillex was able to create a world – influenced by the likes of Hook and Peter Pan – that truly resembled a Christmas wonderland. White snow was replaced by explosive fireworks, and little elves and a workshop were replaced by children and abandoned buildings of Georgia, but the narrative remained the same.
With the release of the video, Skrillex encouraged fans to donate to the “Boys and Girls Club, Bridges for Music, or Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community as part of his label OWSLA’s Nestivus campaign.” And though Christmas is over, the season of giving is not. Follow the links to donate.
Read the full, enlightening, interview via The Creators Project, but we’ll leave you with this.
I think 2015 made me realize I’m really excited about starting new, really starting from a new angle and perspective. Where the music industry is going especially with electronic music, that’s going where I’m sort of going, in the sense that every couple of years it’s good to break your habits. The world is constantly evolving but if you continue your routines that worked before and you keep doing that, you become irrelevant. It’s such an exciting time to rethink things from how you perform, how you release music and what you release. That’s what I’ve been reflecting on mostly, and continuing to grow as a creative director with OWSLA and curate new people. To create something bigger than what is was originally meant to be. It was a record label and now it’s much more than that. – Skrillex
