Ally Bakst Builds A Dollhouse For Her Subconscious In ‘Pretty Little Ghost’ Video
Ally Bakst has released the video for ‘Pretty Little Ghost’, and it takes the song’s unease and gives it a set to haunt. The NYC-born, LA-based artist has turned the dark, atmospheric alt-pop single into a surreal short in which dreams and nightmares are hard to tell apart.
The centrepiece is a dollhouse Bakst built herself, standing in for her subconscious. We follow her as she wakes up inside it and drifts through a run of eccentric characters and increasingly strange scenarios. Familiar rooms keep taking on darker meanings, with the whole thing building towards a chaotic house party and a final twist that casts doubt on everything before it. Visually, it pairs childhood nostalgia with 2010s Tumblr aesthetics and some properly unsettling imagery.
It’s also a statement about how it was made. The video came out through Bakst’s own label, Bakst Records, and was put together by a small team of creative friends, with no major-label backing and no AI-generated visuals. A multidisciplinary artist who works across production, creative direction, photography, painting and set design, Bakst developed the treatment with director and co-creative director EVERS, mapping every character, camera move and symbolic detail, while Carlos Ramirez executive produced.
The imagery follows the song’s themes of dissociation and fractured identity. “I often feel like I’m watching myself live rather than fully living,” Bakst has said of the track, adding that it’s unclear whether she’s the one haunting or being haunted, the dream or the nightmare.
Submit music to DMY here.
Read next: Ibeyi: Between Change and Connection