“I Keep Trying to Fix Bad with Worse” has become a favorite of crowds at The Ex-Bombers' live shows since its release on the “New Love Is Easy” album (2021). It was the second single off that album.

Stemming from the duo's habit of fixing bad things with worse ones, the music video recants a story all-too-common to working musicians. A show gets canceled, and rather than taking it as a sign to take the night off, the musician doggedly tracks down a replacement venue regardless of fit or questionable circumstance.

Story-wise, the music video is an uninterrupted A-block, which is madness from a storytelling perspective. The story and performance are combined into a singular narrative, which results in a very different feeling from typical music videos. The scenario pulls from the absurdist comedy of “Kids in the Hall, specifically the “world gone mad” in everyday circumstances motif, and stands in colorful contrast to the darker work of the duo.

The performance portion of the music video was filmed inside Vanhalla, a mobile music venue and sandwich emporium. This space was created by an eccentric art curator after being inspired by the song. The 1999 minivan was in motion for all of the takes in the video. It was loaded with people and handled like a cardboard box on a skateboard. The filming process could only be described as “bedlam,” amplified by the small fire under the hood right before filming wrapped.

The visual inspiration comes from a variety of 1990s independent cinema and music video offerings with a tinge of Edgar Wright. The visual velocity mirrors the flow of the song, with the subdued sections moving at a slower pace in primary motion, and with the concert having far more visual movement (both secondary and tertiary). The scenes are dense and intense to promote the feeling of being at a music venue in the back of this mobile venue / sandwich emporium.

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