Fall in love, tragically, in The Ghost In You’s video for “The Dying Tree”

Philadelphia’s Billy Pollard is an expert when it comes to heart-wrenching indiefolk ballads that cut to the bone. He’s been composing them for the past several years in his project The Ghost In You, and more recently has taken to animating said songs on an 8-bit Nintendo DS. For both pursuits, he draws on an aching sense of childhood nostalgia.

His latest visual is for “The Dying Tree,” the penultimate track on his 2016 LP Heaven Help Us, and it depicts infatuation and isolation between two schoolmates who are mutually introverted and awkward, so much so that the hope for connection always seems unrequited and the only possibility lies in the world of imagination.

It rings very true for anybody who’s been there, and in a Shel Silverstein via Tim Burton kinda way, the video quite touching in its 8 bit minimalism, equal parts sad and sweet.

Along with the video, The Ghost In You released a new standalone single for “Dirty Laundry” that, fittingly, is haunting. Give it a listen below.