We all can remember a time in life when we didn’t know any better. “You think you’ll live forever, and everything will stay the same,” says Wesley Dean.
The naiveté—and stupidity—of youth is the central theme of “Blood Brothers,” an epic country-tinged rocker from Dean’s self-released LP, Music From Crazy Hearts, due April 26. “It’s the nostalgia of two best friends from birth who are more like brothers, and that feeling of excitement and anxiety mixed up in the pit of their pre-teen stomachs,” says Dean. “You never forget how you once felt with that person.”
An Australian Idol winner back in 2008, when he went by the name Wes Carr, Dean enjoyed considerable success overseas. His 2010 single “Feels Like Woah” is still the most played song on Australian radio. Eleven years later, Carr moved to Nashville, where he took his middle name as his surname and reinvented himself as a more rugged Americana mystery man. His sixth studio album, 2022’s Unknown, served as his official American debut as Wesley Dean. Since then, he’s opened for Jimmy Messina and Travis Tritt and headlined packed shows at Nashville’s legendary Bluebird Cafe.
With Music From Crazy Hearts, Dean sounds like he’s settled comfortably into his outlier persona. Earlier this year, he loaded up his family in an RV for a 55-day road trip, capturing video footage along the way to accompany Music From Crazy Hearts, which was recorded at Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio A. The documentary is slated for release in early 2025.
For the “Blood Brothers” video, Dean says he wanted to “capture the feeling of youth juxtaposed with the adult mind revisiting those carefree times.” That explains the Handycam-style footage of the boys.
“You get an authentic early-’90s vibe,” he says. “We filmed the whole thing on a property that was serendipitously very similar to the song’s imagery. My character passes through the places where his younger self used to play as a child with his now-estranged best friend. The reverse shot at the end is representative of how we track back through our mind’s eye to happier times—and being overwhelmed by memories while longing for something that will never be again.”
We’re proud to premiere the video for “Blood Brothers.”
—Hobart Rowland
