At The Dakota On Sweltering In Darwin While Trying To Break Out

At The Dakota hail from the steamy NT capital Darwin. As locals, you'd think they'd be smart enough to film an outdoor video clip away from the hottest time of the year, right?

Wrong.

"The hottest time in Darwin is October-November when it's sorta not raining too much and it's really, really humid, and that was when we decided to do it," keys player Paul Brandis laughs. "It was raining on the way out and it started off cool, but because we were in the bush and it had been raining it just got ridiculously hot and humid. You've probs been to Bali or Thailand right? Like, real thick humidity."

The lead singer's girlfriend was pressured into the toughest job - wearing a full-coverage cow costume and acting as the runaway protagonist who steals the band's beer. "We pressured her into it, I'm not sure how happy she was. You can imagine it would have been hard to do anywhere in Australia, let alone up in the Darwin heat, it was pretty chaotic.

"It was one of those funny cartoon moments where you land but you know you're gonna fall over."

"So we're running around in the bush and every time the camera's not rolling everyone just ripped everything off. I think Dylan [Podsiadly] put the suit on at the end of the day and he lasted about five seconds before he tripped over.

"It's a bloody miracle that we didn't injure ourselves. I got the closest - there's a shot where I'm jumping over a log but I failed to actually make it over. I face planted real bad. It was one of those funny cartoon moments where you land but you know you're gonna fall over - I think I stumbled about four steps before I ended up just accepting it and falling over," he laughs.

Formed from a number of Darwinian bands, At The Dakota have continued on after losing their co-founder Steve Lees — "he followed his heart down to Sydney with his soon-to-be-wife" — to release their EP Melt, "based on the idea of your brain melting due to stress," he explains, "not the heat!"

"It's a bit of a dark record to be honest, about mental health issues and all that... It goes from the point of [Dylan] leaving his last relationship and dropping out of love to feeling lost, and then to the end of that journey finding the girl he's with now."

While the music scene in Darwin is tight-knit, the lack of venues is an issue. "There's not a huge amount of venues, probably only got about three, so it does make it hard... I think everyone keeps an eye out and makes sure they try not to book at the same time if it's too similar with the same crowd.

"Getting out of Darwin into the rest of the country is crucial in terms of taking it further as a band. The only problem with Darwin is that because it's so small, if you're playing a gig every weekend, you're trying to draw the same crowd in and they're gonna get sick of ya. We try to space our gigs out every few months to make sure we give people a chance to miss us, I suppose."