Traitrs release ‘I Was Ill, You Were Wrong’ video ahead of ten US dates
Traitrs released the black-and-white video for “I Was Ill, You Were Wrong” on 28 August 2026, a month before the Toronto duo open ten US dates in Dallas.
Toronto coldwave duo Traitrs released the official video for “I Was Ill, You Were Wrong” on 28 August 2026, a month before they open a ten-date US run in Dallas. The track first appeared as a standalone single on 28 November 2025 and became the second song on “POSSESSOR”, the fourth Traitrs album, issued through Furniture Records on 13 March 2026.
Shawn Tucker directed the video and shot it in black and white on location in a studio warehouse in Hamilton, Ontario. Emmanuelle Vaughan plays the lead, Daniel Cherney worked as first assistant director, and Tucker and Cherney shared camera duties.
What Shawn Tucker says about the ‘I Was Ill, You Were Wrong’ video
Tucker connects the shoot to a death in his own life and to the way the album was written. “This album is incredibly personal for me because I’m still trying to make sense of a major loss in my own life,” he said. “When I directed this, the goal was to visualize death as this unstoppable force, almost like a terminal illness creeping through the body. It doesn’t care who you are; it just destroys. But I didn’t want the video to just be bleak. It’s about our internal fight.”
The set is a black chamber with no walls, floor or horizon. Vaughan appears under a single overhead light, an oil-dark coating spreads across her hands, arms, back and throat, and she keeps moving until the frame empties. Tucker cast her after working with her on the earlier “Burn In Heaven” video and named Jonathan Glazer’s film “Under the Skin” as the reference for the space.
“The void represented Ultimate Isolation perfectly and supports my visual theme of total isolation,” Tucker said. “There are no walls, no horizons, and no exit. The victims are entirely alone with their desires right before they are destroyed.”
He described the shoot in plain terms: “It was all shot in one day on location in a small studio warehouse in Hamilton, Ontario, that took 7 hours.”
When the song came out in November 2025, Tucker linked it to a shared recognition rather than a private one. “I felt that song connected me to everything and everyone, it is the one thing we all share and have in common,” he said. “It is also a wake up call to live the life you want to live. We only have one chance at this so go dance in the rain.”
Traitrs ‘POSSESSOR’ formats and credits
Traitrs recorded “POSSESSOR” at Wychwood in Toronto with long-time collaborator Josh Korody, who co-produced. Matt Colton mastered the album at Metropolis Mastering, and Tucker supplied the artwork.
Furniture Records pressed the Canadian edition as a black LP limited to 400 copies, plus CD and a limited cassette. Icy Cold Records handled the first European edition on cream white vinyl with an insert, limited to 500 copies, and a CD digipak. Side-Line covered both announcements in Traitrs set March 13 release for fourth album ‘Possessor’ and confirm 2026 North American tour and Icy Cold to launch Traitrs ‘Possessor’ EU edition on cream white vinyl.
The physical editions run ten tracks: “Burn In Heaven”, “I Was Ill, You Were Wrong”, “Seven Fictions”, “Cold Skin”, “Selfish Hunger”, “Prayertaker”, “Dream Drowning”, “Mourn”, “Japanese Picture Pony” and “Crawl”. “Burn In Heaven” got its own video on 12 March 2026, the day before the album arrived.
Traitrs tour dates 2026
The US run opens on 29 September in Dallas and closes on 16 October in Washington, DC.
- 29 September 2026 – Dallas, TX, US – Club Dada
- 30 September 2026 – Austin, TX, US – Elysium
- 1 October 2026 – Pomona, CA, US – Flyway
- 6 October 2026 – Las Vegas, NV, US – The Dive Bar
- 8 October 2026 – Fresno, CA, US – Fulton 55
- 9 October 2026 – San José, CA, US – The Ritz
- 10 October 2026 – Sacramento, CA, US – The Starlet Room at Harlow’s
- 13 October 2026 – Raleigh, NC, US – The Pour House
- 14 October 2026 – Atlanta, GA, US – The Drunken Unicorn
- 16 October 2026 – Washington, DC, US – Pie Shop
About Traitrs
Traitrs formed in Toronto in late 2015 as a recording project built around Shawn Tucker on vocals and guitar and Sean-Patrick Nolan on keyboards and writing. Sessions with producer Josh Korody produced the debut “Rites and Ritual” in 2016, released on the Toronto label Pleasence Records as a cassette and reissued on CD and vinyl over the following years by Alchera Visions, Furniture Records and Icy Cold Records.
“Butcher’s Coin” followed on 18 May 2018, issued jointly by Manic Depression, Alchera Visions and Pleasence Records. Its track “Thin Flesh” was used in Lionsgate’s 2024 remake of “The Crow”. The third album, “Horses in the Abattoir”, arrived on 19 November 2021 through Freakwave, with CD, cassette and coloured vinyl variants in 2021 and 2022 and a US reissue on Metropolis Records on opaque tangerine vinyl in October 2025.
Touring has taken the duo through more than a dozen countries, including Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Castle Party and Canadian Music Week, plus dates with VNV Nation, Lebanon Hanover, She Past Away, Twin Tribes and Ultra Sunn. Side-Line reported on the 2024 North American shows in VNV Nation launches extra North American tour dates with Traitrs.
After a four-year gap, the band returned in September 2025 with the “Burn In Heaven” single, followed by “I Was Ill, You Were Wrong” that November and “POSSESSOR” in March 2026. The new video is the second clip pulled from that album and lands as the autumn US dates approach.
Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!
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