Dua Lipa Gets Wet and Wild for New ‘Illusion’ Music Video

It’s no trick of the eye: Dua Lipa has a new song called “Illusion.”

Lipa, 28, released her new single late Thursday, April 11, along with a music video shot at the Piscina Municipal de Montjuïc in Barcelona, Spain. Lipa appears to have crashed a workout session, strutting up to the high dive while dressed in a black leotard and tights. It’s not long before the backup dancers ditch their athletic shorts and tank tops for swimsuits, performing a choreographed number while Lipa floats in the middle of the pool.

The song from Lipa’s upcoming Radical Optimism, is about identifying a problematic lover before taking the plunge. “I been known to miss a red flag,” she sings at the start. “I been known to put my lover on a pedestal / In the end, those things just don’t last / And it’s time I take my rose-colored glasses off.”

“Ooh, what you doin’? / Don’t know who you think that you’re confusin’,” Lipa belts out on the chorus. “I be like, ooh, it’s amusin’ / You think I’m gonna fall for an illusion.”

This new song was the first one that Lipa wrote with Caroline Ailin, Danny Harle, Tobias Jesso Jr., and Kevin Parker — aka Tame Impala — the musical minds helping her usher in her new sonic era. Writing the song “really broke the ice for the record,” Lipa said in the press release announcing the new song.

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“[‘Illusion’ is] about knowing what you’re getting yourself into but staying for the hell of it,” she adds. “The joke’s on them, it. It’s fun of playing someone at their own game because, ultimately you won’t fall for an illusion.”

Radical Optimism arrives on May 3. Her third studio album will see Lipa shift away from her neo-disco sound, and adopt a more modern pop aesthetic. Lipa told Billboard in March that she feels “good” ahead of releasing the album. “It feels for lack of a better word — radically optimistic.”

She also explained the concept behind the album’s art, which depicts her swimming in the ocean as a shark fin comes closer to her. “Throughout the whole record, there’s this idea of chaos happening around and me trying to push through it in a way that feels authentic and honest to me,” she said.

Lipa said this album will be “sonically” different from her past work. Mark Ronson, who collaborated with Lipa on “Dance the Night,” said he heard some of Radical Optimism. “It’s incredible,” he remarked. “think that’s why there’s the disco ball that smashes in the [‘Dance The Night’] video, right? This feels like her triumphant stomp on that era of her music into whatever she does next.”