Devin and Becky Nice landed in Berlin last September with a single film camera, one crew member (Stephen Ringer, director and writer of their 2015 film Weepah Way For Now), a handful of outfits, and only a vague idea of the city’s geography. They had just 72 hours to shoot the music video for their new single, "Attack of Panic," out February 7.

As they crisscrossed the city in boots and pleather pants, choosing different locations — a backlit bar, an underground subway station, a cobblestone square — to perform loose modern-style choreography, they attracted little knots of curious Berliners ("People were like, ‘Who are these American weirdos and what are they doing?’" Devin joked) and raced to get the shots they needed before the sun went down, or their camera lens fogged up in the sudden warmth of a club, or they were kicked out altogether.

The frenetic pace of the shoot matched that of the video and, according to Becky, the inciting event. "Attack of Panic" was inspired by a particular panic attack that resulted in the Twilight actress missing the Berlin premiere of Breaking Dawn – Part 1. (The blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of an apple being bitten in the video feels more intentional with that knowledge.) "I can still feel reverberations of that one in my whole body when I think about it," the 29 year old actress explained. "Especially the feeling of embarrassment as I was trying to explain to a team of people that I couldn't leave the hotel room."



When it comes to the lens of public perception, Devin and Becky are experts. The two grew up as tween stars, thanks to a multitude of projects with Disney. They established their musical act in 2004, and released their debut record, Into the Rush, the following year under the Disney-owned Hollywood Records. (From personal experience, "No One" and "Chemicals React," both off that album, stir up some heavy millennial nostalgia.) Two more albums followed, the third featuring "Potential Breakup Song," in 2007, which really took them into the stratosphere. Then came a split with their record label, the tabling of various projects, and a relative departure from music altogether as both focused on acting.

The sisters ramped things back up in 2017 with the release of their Ten Years EP — "Promises" is a personal favorite, moody and insistent — and followed up with another EP, Sanctuary. Those songs hinted at a dancier Briar Drive, a little darker, a little older. As they have grown out of the child-star molds that defined their early sound, the sisters are exploring topics like depression, anxiety, and introspection with increasing transparency. (Take a listen to the staggeringly honest "Church" and "Star Maps" for a picture of how much they're laying bare about their perspectives on being public figures.)

"These songs are coming from two women that have now experienced their 20s, not just their teens. We made it through the formative years of self discovery and exploration, though it was a bumpy road," Becky said. "Plenty of it has been happy and celebratory but it has also been chaotic and relentless. I think that has always been relatable, but especially now. Anxiety has become a universal experience."


Like the subject matter, the music video for "Attack of Panic" is darker than the sisters’ previous work. It cuts from shots of Devin and Becky on a city bus looking frazzled and exhausted (hello, Monday morning commute) to them standing, rigid, in a hotel lobby channeling the twins from The Shining, to them pacing dark alleyways and subway stations, to them moving restlessly around a hotel room, taking turns staring hypnotically into the camera lens. Shooting on film gives the video a grainy quality that feels heavier than digital might. Parts are half-lit or backlit, and other parts are overlaid with a red wash that recalls the mindfuck final scene in 2018’s Suspiria (also, coincidentally, set in Berlin). Their voices are airy and spooky in a minor key, set against a deep techno beat. A clamoring synthesizer comes in at the chorus, a little like church bells, but in Mordor. It feels, roughly, like a panic attack.

The Suspiria and Shining interpretations are mine, but "Attack of Panic" does have cinematic roots. While they and their collaborators — CJ Baran and Ben Romans, whom they met backstage at a Jamie Daniels concert — wrote "Attack of Panic," they played scenes from 1986’s Labyrinth on loop in the background, hoping that the song’s production would "hold up against a montage of Jennifer Connelly running around a party, frazzled and looking for something real," Becky said. "It does, and it's actually kind of hilarious how much that scene shares a similar feeling to that of being at Hollywood parties, premieres, all that bullshit." Both sisters urged me to play the ball scene from Labyrinth on mute, with "Attack of Panic" running over the top. I did, and my brain exploded. The two synced up perfectly.



“Attack of Panic” will be paired with another song, “Joan of Arc on the Dance Floor,” which Devin describes as more “triumphant.” The dichotomy is deliberate, designed to give fans a snippet of a club-style Briar Drive that they can gyrate to while applying eyeliner in their underwear (you know, hypothetically), and to build up their appetite for a full-length album, scheduled to be released later this year. The process of continually releasing music, Becky said, can be angst-inducing; it can be tempting to overwork songs, to never let them go. "When you've put a lot of yourself into a song, you start to nitpick from a place of fear, from that place of wanting to protect yourself from inevitable critique. We're lucky to have each other there to say, 'I've got your back and I believe in this too.'"

With each new drop, a different facet of the duo comes to the forefront — a new hint of their range and depth. Becky says that has to do with their goal of offering something holistic: "We feel so comfortable with the space we've carved for ourselves as artists. We release music when we want to, perform how we want, all under our terms. It's the one creative avenue that's completely ours. Music is where we turn to process the rest of our lives and we treat it as a safe space, a sacred space. When people come to our shows, we want them to feel that same way. It should be cathartic and feel... like a santuary."