On March 25, 2015, the band premiered the music video for "Pause" on Billboard, produced in affiliation with Lipton's "Be More Tea" campaign.

Directed by Mike Venezia, the video starts out as a "derailed road trip" turning into "a roadside concert", and culminating into "an all-out desert party".

The video stars Higgenson's at-time 6-year old son Lennon, fronting a grade-school version of the band and falling in love along the way.

[6][7] AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted how the band took stabs at replicating Vampire Weekend ("Heavy Rotation") and Mumford & Sons ("Dance Off Time") throughout the album while also "alternating between giddy, gilded AAA pop ("American Nights," "Never Working") and fleet-footed acoustic ditties ("Time to Move On").

He concluded that, "As befitting their plain-Jane name, there's nothing particularly flashy about the pop of Plain White T's, but on American Nights they construct it and execute it as well as they ever have.