Video: Nina Diaz, ‘For You’

San Antonio alternative rocker Nina Diaz has released the music video for the second single, “For You,” off her 2016 solo debut, “The Beat Is Dead,” released by Cosmica Records.

The album, co-produced with Manuel Calderon at Sonic Ranch Studios in Texas, honors Diaz’s newfound voice as a solo artist. For over 10 years, since age 13, she fronted the punk-rock band Girl in a Coma, touring and recording worldwide with her sister Phanie on drums and Jenn Alva on bass (the latter two forming hardcore punk outfit FEA while Diaz has developed her solo project). The three of them achieved massive appeal as rockers in the LGBTQ and punk  underground, opening for such artists as Tegan and Sara, the Go-Go’s and Morrissey. The road to Girl in a Coma’s success also led Diaz down a dark path of drugs and alcohol. After her family found out the extent of her addictions, Diaz detoxed at home with the help of spirituality and a 12-step program in 2014. She continued to write songs throughout the process of her recovery. “This album is the story of my addiction and my sobriety. It’s like I shed a lot of different layers of skin during this process,” said Diaz.

Four years clean and now married, Diaz shows genuine confidence being in her own skin. Her single explores themes of commitment, be it to spirituality, relationships and/or recovery. She sings with a newfound intimacy and directness, “For you I’ll go / All the way / I feel no pain / I scream your name.” Befitting her lyrics, Diaz also plays with themes of sexuality in her new video. Hinted at over social media in the past couple years, Diaz comes out with her fondness for the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” in black fishnet stockings, boots and a shiny hot magenta corset. The influence of both the mysteriously sexy Magenta (Patricia Quinn) and the alien nymphomaniacal cross-dresser Frankenfurter (Tim Curry) shines through as Diaz sings seductively tender from one moment to passionately declarative the next. The song is blissfully and beautifully along the veins of both “Science Fiction/Double Feature” and “Don’t Dream It, Be It.” Those who have been a part of the cultural experience of Rocky Horror can understand the appeal, and Diaz plays with the tropes of it as both live stage performance and film, the video creatively directed by Milcho. 

||| Watch: Nina Diaz’s video for “For You”

||| Live: Nina Diaz plays the Hi Hat on Thursday. It was a show originally scheduled for the Echo. Prima Donna and Wild Moccasins support. Tickets.

||| Also: Watch the video for the first single off “The Beat Is Dead,”  “Trick Candle”

||| Also: Stream the Spanish version of the song, “Por Ti”