Story from North America

Did You Know?

• The film garnered over 13 million views on YouTube as of February 2026.
• Reviewers on IMDb called it charming and noted its nostalgic feel.

Plot

The short opens with a man strumming a guitar before a crudely drawn map, announcing he will tell a story from North America. The view zooms into the Midwestern United States or Southern Canada, focusing on a house and panning through an upstairs window into a child's bedroom. A frightened boy shouts for his father, who bursts in. The boy says he saw a spider on his floor and asks his father to squish it. A sung dialogue follows, where the boy expresses fear and disgust while the father urges him to overcome his pride and appreciate the uniqueness of all life, touching on egalitarianism and how unfounded fear can destroy life viewed as less pretty.

Music

The entire dialogue is sung in a monotone voice accompanied solely by an acoustic guitar. The lyrics are performed by Garrett Davis, who also worked on Off the Air (2011) and Utopia (2020). In a 2017 interview, Lepore stated she brought Davis on for his weirdly intimate, creepy, gender-ambiguous voice, which she felt suited the animation and tone.

Artstyle

The animation is hand-drawn and hand-shaded pencil work, with a surrealist style that exaggerates human features. Characters change form to illustrate their words: the father morphs into a small atomic bomb and a floating caricature of the Devil when reprimanding his son. Later, when the father tells his son to swallow his pride, the son is shown at a table with utensils and a grotesque, hairy, heart-like organ on a plate.