Kendra McKinley’s New Music Video Is a Love Letter to Community

When Kendra McKinley decided to make a music video for “Something That I Oughta Hold on To,” a track off her new EP—music for smoking weed with your bra off—she didn’t book a studio, hire a crew, or center herself in the frame. Instead, she sent a text into the world and waited.

What came back: 43 small acts of affection.

The video, premiering today on Chronogram, is a loose, joyful collage of people lip-syncing, dancing, mugging for the camera, and generally being themselves. Friends filmed themselves wherever they happened to be—kitchens, living rooms, studios, backyards—then sent the clips back to McKinley, who edited the whole thing together in iMovie. No budget. No polish. (Well, a little polish.) Just a constellation of human presence orbiting a song.

“It felt like I was making a time capsule of my community,” McKinley says. “These are the people I love. And suddenly they’re part of this music that comes from a really personal place.”

McKinley, now based in Catskill, has lived in the Hudson Valley for nearly four years, and the region shows up clearly in the video. Among the familiar faces: Annie Poole, head of the kitchen and matriarchal force at the Avalon Lounge; Laura and Liam Singer, the Avalon’s owners; Taganyahu Swaby of Yaad Wellness; artist and climate activist Zaria Forman; Soul Fire Farm communications manager and embodiment practitioner Crysta Bloom; stained glass artist Dan Schwartz; photographer Lucy Bohnsack; and a lineup of local musicians including Beccs, Rose Stoller, Catie Friel, and Carter McElroy.

They appear alongside friends from McKinley’s West Coast past, a friend in Holland, her parents, her brother, and friends now navigating parenthood—kids and all. The result feels less like a traditional music video than a community roll call, stitched together by rhythm and trust.

McKinley has made polished, conceptual videos before, but this one emerged from a deliberate act of letting go. She gave contributors minimal direction—be silly, be sassy, use props, follow your own inspiration—and was genuinely surprised by what came back. Some people sent a few seconds. Others recorded the entire song. A few went all in, creating elaborate mini–music videos of their own, complete with costumes and edits. “There could honestly be more versions of this video, appearing in the future,” she says, still sounding a little delighted by the idea.

That openness mirrors the music itself. Asked how she describes her sound, McKinley doesn’t hedge. “I say it’s music for smoking weed with your bra off,” she says with a laugh. It’s a phrase that manages to mean everything and nothing at once—an invitation rather than a definition. Warm, intimate, a little mischievous, the songs feel lived-in rather than performed.

The video also extends the spirit of McKinley’s EP release show at the Avalon Lounge on November 6, which she describes as another moment when collaboration expanded the work beyond her singular imagination. “New things happen when you invite people in,” she says. “The work becomes more surprising, more fulfilling.”

There’s something delightfully generous about that idea—about resisting the lone-genius narrative in favor of shared authorship. In five or ten years, McKinley knows, this video will feel different. Faces will change. Lives will move. But that’s precisely the point. For now, it captures who her people are, right here, right now, in the Hudson Valley and beyond—moving together, loosely, to the same song.

Listen to Kendra McKinley’s new EP, music for smoking weed with your bra off, on Bandcamp.

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