Dessa 'Sound the Bells' Music Video: Doomtree Singer Swims Underwater With Life-Sized Sculptures

It's not often you see indie artists go all-out for expensive music videos, but Dessa decided to take the plunge, so to speak. The Minneapolis-based Doomtree rapper/singer flew down to Mexico's Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan Peninsula so she could film a video for her 2013 song "Sound the Bells."

The video features several underwater sculptures created by Englishman Jason deCaires Taylor in order to rehabilitate the area's sea life (according to PRI).

"It's really clever, as a conservationist, he stuck on this brilliant idea that instead of prohibiting people swimming near the reefs and bringing with them all the sunscreen and traffic that can really damage the reefs, he said, 'well, I'll just put something over there for the tourists to see,'" Dessa said.

"So I was one of many people who wanted to see the work that he'd done in this kind of underwater museum, which will eventually become transformed as coral grows over it, into a reef of its own."

Ready for a weird mental image? The singer said she trained for her underwater scenes by nearly drowning herself at a Minnesota pool.

"I'm not a very strong swimmer, but I knew I wanted to swim convincingly for this video," she said. "So I spent a lot of time at the YWCA in Minneapolis trying to stay at the bottom of the pool and I was totally freaking out the teenage lifeguard - 'What is this girl doing in Lane Four?'"

Check out the video here:

Doomtree is a Minneapolis-based rap collective that just dropped a new album, All Hands, in December. "Sound the Bells" came from Dessa's third album, Parts of Speech.