Premiere: Jayli Wolf Finds Strength In Vulnerability In "Would You Die" Video

What do you do when you’ve fallen so deep in love that you’ve lost your sense of self? Make your way through the fog to find yourself on the other side. Or, at least, that’s the journey artist Jayli Wolf goes through in the music video for “Would You Die,” premiering below, off her new EP Wild Whisper.

“I wrote this song after feeling true unconditional love for the first time,” Wolf said of the track. “After that, I learned that conditions and boundaries are very different. I used to be so fearful of love, of the power I thought another soul could have over me. My definition of love used to be more of a tragedy than anything else. As if I would have to die for it. As if love could swallow me whole.”

The singer, who in addition to being a talented musician and storyteller is also a proud queer, Indigenous doomsday cult survivor, is candid about her trauma and the challenges she’s overcome to get to where she is today. Her breakout song and video (that she also wrote and directed), “Child Of The Government,” details the story of her family’s connection to the Sixties Scoop that targeted Indigenous youth in Canada, her father included. That ethos of resilience in vulnerability translates Wolf’s songs about romantic love.

“Now I understand, it’s not love that breaks a heart, it is the conditions I used to put on love,” she explained. “The music video for ‘Would You Die’ is a visual representation of me learning this lesson. Taking off my armor and bearing everything. Following an idea of love through dangerous places, and ultimately being completely swallowed up by it. When I wake up at the end, I realize that I put myself there in that darkness. I buried who I truly was to be loved in return. This song is about finding self love. Realizing that ‘the stars were never mine.’ That I could let go, that no one belonged to me. That true love is freedom. Freedom from conditions.”

Watch the premiere of “Would You Die” below and check out Jayli’s new EP, Wild Whisper, here.