Conan Gray Kicks Off Vevo’s New “Artist Portrait” Series With “Searching for Wishbone”

Photo via Vevo.

Music video network Vevo dropped the first installment of its new “Artist Portrait” series today featuring indie pop star Conan Gray.

“Artist Portrait” videos will include stripped-back performances by fan-favorite musicians coupled with vulnerable interviews. The series meets artists “where they are,” Vevo Executive Producer Chris Pereira said, with the first mini film featuring Gray in a quiet coastal cabin on a New York beach.

“Vevo’s Artist Portrait series delves into the spirit — the inner creative life — of an artist in the present tense,” Pereira said.

Vevo Senior Vice President of Programming & Marketing JP Evangelista said the team chose Gray for the inaugural episode because of his deep-rooted connection with the platform. Gray has worked with Vevo on projects like “DSCVR Artists to Watch” in 2020 and “Live from Vevo Studios” in 2024.

In Gray’s Artist Portrait, entitled “Searching for Wishbone,” he performs acoustic versions of two songs from his latest album, Wishbone, and reflects on the intense emotion that pushed him to write the story the record tells.

Photo via Vevo.

“There was a common problem in my life which was searching for people who were undeniably distant no matter how much I begged for them to be close to my life, and it happened enough times to where I looked at it and was I like, ‘This is a me thing,’” Gray said in the beginning of the video. “Sometimes you don’t even know who you are until you say it to yourself in the mirror.”

In his performances of “Actor” and “Nauseous,” Gray takes already heartbreaking songs about unreciprocated love and abandonment and twists the knife. On the former, Gray sit on the floor of a wood-paneled bedroom, daylight flooding through the many windows. “Nauseous” is later performed once the sun has gone down, with waves crashing against rocks and the wind gently whipping through his hair.

The 26-year-old singer, whose most popular songs are often his most gut-wrenching, also speaks of what drives him to write. With the sound of the ocean rolling and seagulls squawking in the background, Gray said he would sit down and write when there was an ache in his heart that “no song out there could quite heal.”

“I think it made me feel a bit insecure that there weren’t other songs that were like this, but I wrote them and then I felt deeply relieved,” Gray said.

The 10-minute-video ends at nightfall, with Gray attesting he’s “writing a new plan” for himself, compared to that of his 18-year-old self.

Vevo has not announced which other musicians will be featured in the “Artist Portrait” series, but you can watch Gray’s episode here and stay up to date with Vevo here.

Watch Gray’s “Artist Portrait” on YouTube.