Betty Who was in Washington, D.C. yesterday for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration ceremony, excitedly hoping to catch a glimpse of him during the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue. (She was successful.) As the pomp and circumstance of Monday’s historic activities fade from view, today marks a first for the Aussie-Bostonian pop singer, albeit on a much smaller stage than the one reserved for the leader of the free world.

Betty Who has debuted her inaugural music video, created for her super-duper second single “Somebody Loves You,” released in December. In honor of the occasion, I invited Betty Who to share a little about being in front of the camera for the first time.

“I went back and forth with Evan Savitt, the director, over and over again for what we wanted this video to be like. We wanted it to be perfect. I remember Evan asking, at one of our first meetings, how I felt about acting and dancing in public. I told him I loved it and immediately started singing and dancing and strutting down the street, looking over my shoulder back at him as I played it out for all it was worth. Once he saw that it was pretty much a non-issue (my no-shame outlook on life really set that one up for me), we started getting really creative and silly with our ideas.

“We decided to film the whole video indoors at a dance studio in the financial district of Manhattan. We started the day at around 7AM, loading in the camera equipment (up to the fourth floor in a building where the elevator was broken) and going over choreography with the dancers. We were still rehearsing when Evan told us that he and his crew of four guys was going to start filming just to get an idea of what it was going to look like so the girls and I kind of just did our thing for half an hour and messed around while these four guys filmed us being silly (some of the shots from that even made it into the video).

“Starting the day is always the most awkward part about filming a music video, because you’re still getting into the swing of things and it’s still wildly awkward to look directly into a camera and — as my mother has been saying ever since we got the first cut of the video — “making love to it.” But I’m a lucky girl in this regard because my whole adolescent life was spent acting out and wanting to be the center of attention, so when it comes to feeling natural in front of a camera, it comes more quickly than I should probably feel comfortable with.

“We spent the rest of the day filming until around 7 or 8PM when we turned the whole dance space into some kind of gymnasium during prom in the Eighties. We hung streamers and a disco ball and set up a fog machine and played Michael Jackson. Then we basically asked all of my friends in New York I had been able to wrangle together to dance around to my song over and over again while throwing balloons and drinking cheap vodka.

“We had a riot filming this video and I am so proud and excited about how it turned out. I hope you like it and have as much fun watching it as I did filming it!”

“Somebody Loves You” is certainly a hoot, especially with Betty Who rocking legwarmers and an off-the-shoulder top. Somebody loves Flashdance.

Download “Somebody Loves You” for free below. Betty Who is also hosting a remix contest for the song, with one lucky participant’s revamp receiving a release alongside official remixes by FM Attack and Max Burnside and a not-insubstantial stash of cash. Details here.

Free download of Betty Who – “Somebody Loves You” via SoundCloud.