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Fresh from her anticipated Coachella debut over the weekend, Laufey is making waves once more thanks to the release of her latest music video for Madwoman. The catchy jazz track is from the Icelandic-Chinese musician’s recently released A Matter of Time: The Final Hour, the deluxe edition of her Grammy-winning album A Matter of Time. But it isn’t just any regular music video starring Laufey, as it also features a stacked cast of Gen Z Asian-American stars consisting of The Summer I Turned Pretty star Lola Tung, KATSEYE member Megan Skiendiel, Olympic gold medalist Alysa Liu, and Heated Rivalry breakout star Hudson Williams.
The choice to have Skiendiel and Liu in her music video is particularly interesting because Laufey famously got mistaken for the former during the 2026 Golden Globes while the latter skated to one of Laufey’s tracks, Promise, during the World Championships. You could say it’s a full-circle moment. Any one of these people working with Laufey would have already been great, but the fact that she got all of these Asian stars together in one video is even better.
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Like A Mad, Madwoman
Filmed in Los Angeles in the weeks leading up to Laufey’s Coachella debut, the music video stars the 26-year-old musician as “The Madwoman”, who embodies the song’s theme of having intense and obsessive feelings for someone in a turbulent relationship. Williams portrays “The Man”, The Madwoman’s lover, while Liu, Skiendiel, and Tung play The Madwoman’s besties.
It follows her as she lives a seemingly rich and luxurious life with her hot lover, but the picture-perfect veneer is not quite as it seems as Laufey’s character begins to realize the dark red flags that surrounds her and nobody else seems to see. While they aren’t physically present in the music video, Asian-American actors Havana Rose Liu and Chase Sui Wonders also make cameos in the video as cover girls on magazines spotted in the beginning.
In terms of a music video cast, Laufey couldn’t have done any better than this. And at a glance, it might seem like Laufey assembled some of the hottest young names in pop culture just for the sake of it. But there’s a deeper meaning behind the cast and the video’s message that Laufey wanted to convey.
“Growing up, I felt a general lack of representation for people who looked like me in music and media. With the ‘Madwoman’ video, I wanted to be that representation,” shared Laufey in a press statement. “The result is what honestly feels like my absolute dream video and exactly what younger Laufey would have loved to see.” The Asian representation also extends behind the camera, such as director Warren Fu, director of photography Andrew Truong, and production designer Evaline Huang.
The video’s aesthetic takes inspiration from the work of the late photographer Slim Aarons, who was known for the vibrant way he captured American high society. The result is a take on the American Dream in the mid-century but filtered through the Asian-American experience, populating the world with characters that aren’t normally associated with the time period and other fun details like dimsum and mahjong. The video’s visual cues also remind us a bit of the movie Don’t Worry Darling (2022), especially in the ending.
They even added choreography, with a highlight being a scene of Liu and Skiendiel dancing together. The styling, meanwhile, is set in a very ‘60s and ’70s-inspired aesthetic with the lace, headbands, and bold colors combined with a few Asian influences that play on the video’s mid-century luxe theme. There’s also the interesting detail of how the besties all wear rose-tinted glasses as not just a nod to the era, but also to symbolize how they don’t see what’s wrong with the man.
It all makes for a fun yet still deep music video that radiates break-the-internet energy with its A-list cast while reimagining that period of time through a more Asian lens.
Featured Image and Photos: Laufey (via Instagram and YouTube)
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