After a quality debut LP in BLUEPRINT, released in February 2025, Austin R&B cool girl Grace Sorensen expanded her vision for the project beyond the songs. That August, she teamed up with Magna Carda’s Megz Kelli and her FLYPAPER partner Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence to adapt the record’s concept into a short film. The visual album, out last Friday, adds a new dimension of intimacy to the project through explorations of Sorensen’s relationship with herself and her roots.
“It allows people to slow down, and I think the right people will want to indulge in something a little more long-form,” Sorensen says of the film. “We have so much short-form right now.”
Equal parts introspection and love letter to her hometown, “BLUEPRINT,” filmed entirely in the Austin area, features Sorensen taking on different characters, each one an embodiment of a different aspect of her identity.
Over the course of the 16-minute film, Sorensen interrogates her dark side at Antone’s; celebrates her Mexican heritage with an entourage of dancers in front of the indigenous Mexican mural adorning Leal’s Tire Shop; and honors her late father in an intimate sequence filmed at the home he built in Leander. Sorensen says each of the five featured songs represent a concept thematically significant to the album: confrontation of self, liberation, passion, sensitivity, and faith.
“She’s a visionary,” says Kelli, who has collaborated with Sorensen several times over the years. “That is part of her work. It’s clear in her music, but it also translates visually.”
Sorensen says the idea for “Blueprint” arose from a need to find a creative way to promote the album long after the fact. Her father’s passing during the end of the record’s production left her emotionally unable to put in the effort required to market it. When she saw neo-soul singer Baby Rose’s BADBADNOTGOOD-produced “Slow Burn” at a short film festival (where one of Kelli’s projects was also screening), she became captivated by the idea of creating a visual album. Now, BLUEPRINT has a new lease on life.
Visually, Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” is an obvious comp, but Sorensen took cues from a variety of media when mapping out the project. The goth flavor in the title track’s Antone’s scene comes from childhood favorite Edward Scissorhands, while the fish-eye lens glitz that accompanies “COLOGNE” nods to Missy Elliott videos from the Aughts. The reappearing vintage red Ford Fairlane, a loaner from Sorensen’s childhood friend, works as both a reference to Chicano lowrider culture and to the place where Sorensen often finds her creative spark.
“I do everything in my car,” says the singer, whose moments journaling alone in the eye-popping car between songs give the video a narrative focus. “It’s the place that I have when I’m uncomfortable at somebody else’s house. It’s where I listen to all my mixes, my masters. When [you’re] driving, your motor skills are occupied, so your brain can have fun, and that’s when I will come up with melodies and little one liners.”
Though “BLUEPRINT” bursts with vibrant energy, the artist’s ambition, time constraints, and the Texas heat made for an exhausting filming process. Shot in just two-and-a-half days in August, constant wardrobe changes and demanding performances left an already mourning Sorensen drained by wrap.
“On the real, I was at the peak of grief when we were shooting,” she shares. “When we were done, I was so over it. I was like, ‘I can’t hear these songs anymore, I can’t hear this project anymore, I want to move on from it.’
“But now that I’ve had time and space to see how it’s all come together … I have a lot of gratitude.”
Sorensen wrote the voiceover for “BLUEPRINT,” a constant, soothing presence throughout the video, some time after the shoot. The short monologues point to a mature perspective gained after sitting with the experience for a while.
“This was my reminder that there’s always a place to call home,” she narrates. “People to call home/ And a mission we’re gifted with/ And that there’s always a reason to keep driving.”
