“Do you understand what this means for my eight-year-old figure skating heart?” Laufey asked Monday as she unveiled the new video for “Madwoman,” a deluxe-track off her 2025 album A Matter of Time.
The clip, released on Laufey’s official YouTube channel, is a glancing, stylish pastiche of 1960s visuals — think Slim Aarons and Mad Men — directed by Warren Fu and starring The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Lola Tung, Heated Rivalry actor Hudson Williams, KATSEYE’s Megan Skiendiel and Olympic figure-skating champion Alysa Liu. Williams even recreates the iconic rear-shot of Don Draper from Mad Men’s opening credits.
The trailer for the video drew major attention ahead of the drop, picking up more than 700,000 views in the three days before the full release (a strong preview signal for a largely indie-jazz artist crossing into mainstream culture).
For Liu, the cameo completes a narrative she’s quietly built with Laufey’s music: Liu skated to Laufey’s song “Promise” for her short program on the way to both the 2025 World title and the 2026 Olympic gold. Laufey earlier reposted Liu’s comeback debut and later introduced her onstage in 2025 — moments the singer has referenced while sharing the new clip.
Beyond the cast, the release arrives at a peak moment for Laufey. She won Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album at the 2026 Grammys for A Matter of Time and — according to music-industry notices this week — has re-signed with Warner Chappell and is slated to receive ASCAP’s Creative Voice Award. It’s a compact career arc: critical acclaim, mainstream festival stages (she and KATSEYE made Coachella debuts this past weekend) and now commercial alignments.
Pairing an Olympic champion with a throwback, film-noir-inflected video is a savvy move — it signals Laufey’s intent to translate niche taste into cultural moments that land across music, sport and fashion, and it will likely increase sync opportunities and streaming momentum beyond her core audience.
Social reaction has been immediate. Clips of Liu on the set circulated on social platforms and the video chatter bumped visibility for all the cameos; Liu’s own profile has ballooned in recent months (her Instagram follower count reportedly rose from roughly 150,000 to about 8.2 million in that span). Fans of the show and skating communities were quick to point out Tung and Liu side-by-side, while music insiders noted the Warren Fu collaboration as an overt bid for wider pop placement.
What’s next? Expect more festival and TV bookings, a bump in catalog streams for songs like “Promise,” and an ASCAP ceremony on the horizon — plus the practical business lift from a Warner Chappell publishing re-up. For fans: the video is available now on Laufey’s channel; for the industry: this is another example of how niche-grown artists are staging crossover moments with high-visibility cultural partners.