On December 2, 1983, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video premiered on MTV. Promoted as a 14-minute “short film,” it was directed by An American Werewolf in London director John Landis, and cost upward of $900,000 to make.
It was, to say the least, a huge deal, and MTV played it on heavy rotation to meet viewer demands. The “Thriller” music video—I mean, “short film”—basically redefined what a music video could be.
Forty-three years later, the music video for “Thinking Seat,” Penelope Isles’ first single off their new album, 3 (September 25), premiered online, and it’s the furthest possible thing from “Thriller.” To be fair, there’s not much that compares to the Michael Jackson classic, even in 2026.
The video for “Thinking Seat” depicts Lily Wolter, one-half of the sibling indie-rock duo, on camera, with her brother Jack, shoddily shooting her, as they make their way around their homebase of Brighton, England. Lily is carrying an old, white, paint-peeled chair, her “thinking seat,” if you will.
The song was inspired by the brother’s and sister’s experience of driving their family’s splitter van and their inability to stop thinking, worrying, reflecting, forgetting, and keeping their shit together.
When Lily and Jack needed to create a music video to help promote the song, their aspirations were high. But their budget was practically nonexistent.
“We’ve made a lot of our own DIY-style music videos over the years, so we wanted to come up with something that stood out,” says Jack.
Their original idea was that Lily would sit in the “thinking seat,” and sing the song while they walked around Brighton.
“Deep down, I think we both knew the idea wasn’t that visually exciting—but we only had a few hours to make the video, so we headed out to film it anyway,” says Jack. “We wanted to see how it felt on camera, but very quickly we lost faith in the original vision.”
Instead, Jack says, the afternoon became a conversation about what a music video actually is, are they worth making, does anyone even watch them anymore, and the current state of the music industry, as he lugged around a 30-pound camcorder and Lily, the chair.
“I just kept filming Lily as we both realised that this felt far more impactful, more interesting, and, most importantly, more honest than footage of her miming on a seat.”
The “Thinking Seat” music video is an existential exercise on music videos, the music industry, and the band themselves.
“I can’t wait to stop carrying this stupid chair around,” Lily says, sighing, her complaining cutting abruptly into the song 49 seconds in.
“Just another Brighton band doing more fuckin’ obvious shit on Brighton Beach,” Lily says later in the video, as she carries the chair over her shoulder, walking toward the shore.
The song features an acronym the band coined: “YGAKI,” which stands for “you guys are killing it.” In the video, Lily explains that they use it to poke fun at the people who assume that being in a band, any band, is glamorous.
“A phrase that we say to each other when things feel particularly quite bleak, when you go into your one-star AirBnB that costs 40 pounds outside of Birmingham, and there’s a massive hair on your pillow, and a dead moth…”
Then Jack continues, “And there’s people outside tryin’ to fuckin’ break into the van…”
The scene ends with Lily saying sarcastically, “And no one came to your gig. You guys are killing it!”
Sure, Penelope Isles isn’t going to win any MTV VMAs for “Thinking Seat,” but it’s a refreshingly honest, easily-relatable take on being in the music industry in 2026, where streaming pays little and the internet has fragmented the way people follow and gather around artists that way they did during the music video’s heyday more than 40 years ago.
Penelope Isles will be headlining U.K. and E.U. shows, as well as making festival appearances, in October and November. You can find dates here.