ŽEN, Croatian prog/indie-rock trio, have released a music video for the song Zgrade, which strongly closes their latest studio album Ciklus (Moonlee Records, 2024) while also bringing together and rounding off their work to date.

When a band exists long enough, we no longer view it only through its discography, miles of touring, and concert dates. We begin to perceive it as a building that gradually absorbs everything that has happened within it – noise, cracks, weight, vibrations, people coming and going.

In the song Zgrade, the members of ŽEN use the metaphor of architecture to reflect on their long-standing musical journey – on resilience and resisting burnout, on stability that does not exclude damage, on time leaving marks without bringing down the structure. The buildings in the song are not merely physical objects, but organisms of memory; places that remember lives, changes, cracks, and survival.

A similar poetic approach is used in the music video by young cinematographer and director Paola Lada Franulović, who turns city facades into living protagonists of the story. The camera does not observe buildings as static objects, but intimately – as living bodies. Windows, balconies, walls, antennas, and worn facades become carriers of emotion and duration, while everyday urban landscapes shift from stillness into an almost organic rhythm.

An additional interesting aspect of the music video is that its main protagonists are the buildings of Zagreb’s Trešnjevka – a district that is home to many Zagreb artists, including members of the band ŽEN. The video is released directly ahead of ŽEN’s concert at Park Stara Trešnjevka in Zagreb, as part of the Trešnja Trešti programme. In the context of the song and the video, the concert in the very heart of the district functions as a natural continuation of the story – a return of the music to the space from which it emerged.