Janina Gavankar Teams Up With Drum Corps Jersey Surf For New Single

If you don't know who Janina Gavankar is, then maybe you haven't been watching TV in the past ten years. She has been on shows like The L Word, True Blood, and Arrow, and even video games, most recently in Far Cry 4. Well turns out she's got a singing career too, and she's pretty damn good at that, too. Check out her new single "Don't Look Down" and see how long it takes you to spot what exactly makes it stand out.

So as I'm sure you noticed by the first five seconds (or if you bothered to read the title of the article), she has teamed up with a professional touring drum corps group to produce this video and single. Jersey Surf, a drum corps out of Berlin New Jersey, is a competitive group that has been around since the early 90s and been competing in national and world competitions for drum and bugle corps ever since. Janina, who has been a long time musician, saw the decision as an obvious choice.

The song is so fun and upbeat. The addition of a drum line as the focal point of a song instead of as a prop like in other pop music that has attempted the same thing (lookin' at you Gwen Stefani) really made for something new and interesting. Rarely do these two worlds come together, so it was refreshing and new. This is definitely a song that will take a lot of people back to their high school days of being in both choir and band, creating nostalgia in something that doesn't sound the least bit dated -- and that's a feat.

As far as the video, I wasn't as impressed. I like that the Jersey Surf team was a prominent part of the video and not just a backdrop. Much of the video highlights them individually, which was nice. Other than that, the video was pretty basic. What was even more frustrating is that they had this cool camera-mounted drone that was flying around, but they hardly use any of the footage from it. It felt like a bit of a waste to see a all these shots of her singing into the drone, but not getting to really see much of that footage.

I really enjoyed this one. Although I was a bit surprised that the Illinois native didn't go with drum corps from her state such as The Cavilers or Phantom Regiment (which she actually auditioned for after high school) and instead opted to go with an East Coast group, but they did very well. This track and video are definitely must haves for anyone who is looking for something different.