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Video premiere: Julie Feeney's 'Dear John'

Brian Mansfield
Special for USA TODAY
Irish singer Julie Feeney releases her latest album, "Clocks," in the US on June 18. She'll also tour the US this month.
  • The acclaimed Irish singer will release her latest album%2C %22Clocks%2C%22 in the US June 18
  • In the video%2C Feeney rides an interactive sculpture called a Pedal Praxinoscope
  • Feeney is currently working on the libretto and score of her first opera.

The video for Julie Feeney's Dear John matches the wide-eyed wonder of her art-pop song. And if the song's title portends sad things, the song itself is something altogether different, a vintage concoction of harpsichord, harp and strings.

The Dear John video, premiering at USA TODAY, features the Irish singer riding a contraption called a Pedal Praxinoscope — an interactive sculpture, designed by artist Emily Robyn Archer and technician Conor MacCague, based on an early moving-image machine called the Praxinoscope and made from reclaimed bicycles, wood, mirror and vinyl.

Dear John appears on Feeney's latest album, Clocks, which comes out June 18 in the U.S. Released last fall in Ireland, Clocks was nominated for the 2012 Choice Music Prize for Irish album of the year, an award Feeney won for her first album, 13 songs, in 2006.

Writing about a 10-night run at New York's Irish Arts Center last year, New York Times critic Jon Pareles said Feeney's songs "tease, ponder, reminisce, philosophize and invent parables, and she sings them in a plush, changeable mezzo-soprano that usually holds a kindly twinkle."

Feeney is currently composing the libretto and score of her first opera, BIRD, slated to premiere later this year. She'll play Joe's Pub in New York City on June 12, with additional U.S. dates to be announced.

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