Music Video of the Week: Doechii Channels Chaos and Nostalgia in New “Anxiety” Visual
Written by h.campbell216 on April 22, 2025
If 2024 was the year that cemented Doechii’s rise, 2025 is proving she’s far from done evolving. On Friday, April 18, the GRAMMY Award-winning artist unveiled the music video for her viral track “Anxiety”—a sleeper hit that’s been quietly building momentum and now receives a striking visual treatment that folds time, memory and madness into one surreal loop.
Directed by James Mackel, the video is a time capsule and a statement piece. It opens with the camera zooming through a window into Doechii’s bedroom—a near shot-for-shot recreation of her 2020 YouTube freestyle over Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” That reference, which longtime fans clocked immediately, is more than a clever nod. It’s a dig at the industry plant claims and a reminder that her artistic vision has always been intact—what changed was the visibility, not the talent.
Choreographed by Robbie Blue, with support from Marie Spieldenner and Lucas Debiasi, “Anxiety” finds Doechii stuck in a dreamlike repetition of waking up to chaos. Her house becomes a manifestation of mental spirals: the stove bursts into flames, a fireman twiddles his thumbs, and strangers roam her space as glass shatters around her. The randomness feels deliberate—visualizing how anxiety distorts the mundane.
But the most layered moment comes when two characters appear, styled in the haunting body paint and hairstyles of Gotye and Kimbra from the original “Somebody That I Used to Know” video. It’s a gentle tip of the hat to the song that inspired her early freestyle, and for many millennial fans, it conjures a wave of nostalgia. That emotional dissonance—between memory and anxiety, humor and dread—is what gives the video its edge.
By the end, Doechii finally escapes the house and joins a flash mob in the street, dancing in a burst of early 2010s-inspired choreography that’s as campy as it is cathartic. As she attempts to escape the crowd, she stumbles across her window and sees herself sitting in the bed, as the video reveals to be a never-ending loop. It’s a left-field ending for a deeply personal song, but in typical Doechii fashion, it’s on her terms—bold, bizarre, and unbothered.
