Famed American musician and producer Rostam Batmanglij–a founding member of iconic indie-rock band Vampire Weekend–has released a new global warming-themed track and video called “These Kids We Knew.” The song follows up the multi-talented artist’s previous single “Unfold You” released last year.
The video for “These Kids We Knew” opens with holographic images of four dogs running on an open landscape before quickly transitioning to a lyric video of various images of Earth and environmental disasters throughout the globe. The song takes on mercurial melodies as light drums and guitar roll at a steady but soft pace. The video does include some more beautiful and uplifting imagery, and marks another impressive outing for the musician.
Discussing the track himself, Batmanglij said the track was essentially about the different perspectives of global warming from three different generations while revealing it was written as he was battling COVID-19. “I was thinking of three generations while I was writing this song,” he says. “There’s a generation of adults who don’t see global warming as their problem because they think they won’t be impacted by it. Then there’s a generation younger than mine, who will certainly have to deal with what is happening. In the song I have a fantasy of the younger generation arresting the adults and putting them on trial in the streets of cities around the world. The song was written in a fever-dream state during the second week of March last year while I was recovering from Covid-19.”
Batmanglij has had a busy year, which saw producing Haim’s 2020 album Women In Music Pt. III, which is nominated for Album of the Year at the upcoming Grammy Awards. He also collaborated with the likes of Lykke Li and Maggie Rogers, among others. “These Kids We Knew” is currently available to stream on all platforms.
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