Arkells Are Being Flown To The Olympics To Perform For Team Canada, All Thanks To One Tweet

Arkells have earned their spot in the upper echelon of Canadian music over the past decade: Their three most recent albums have peaked in the top 5 on the Canadian charts, and they have multiple singles that have found themselves at or near the top of the Canadian rock and alternative charts.

With their most recent album, 2016’s Morning Report, they even have a sports anthem on their hands: “Knocking At The Door,” which they released as a single in 2017, played during this year’s Super Bowl broadcast, and it’s also appeared on NHL and MLB broadcasts. It also popped up during the current Olympics: Yahoo Canada Sports shared a video of Canadian athletes getting medals on the podium with the song playing in the background, and that was the start of Arkells’ journey to Pyeongchang.

The band quoted the tweet, and, mentioning Team Canada and Air Canada, wrote, “We need to go to Korea stat and play this for our Olympians.” The airline responded, “I think we can make that happen. What do you think? Bonne idée?!!,” to which Team Canada replied with a series of emojis depicting the team flying to South Korea, and wrote, “Guess #TeamCanada will see you guys soon.”

Arkells posted a photo of them on a plane bound for South Korea earlier today, evidence that this is definitely happening.

Frontman Max Kerman told CBC News that he’s pretty excited about the trip:

“There’s lots of funny and unexpected perks of being in a working band, and going to the Olympics under these circumstances is definitely at the top of the list. We are going for basically four days, which is kind of nuts given it’s 16 hours each way. But I can’t think of a better reason to check out Korea for the first time. Should be a trip.”

It looks like they’ll have a warm reception once they touch down in Pyeongchang, too: Canadian ice dancer Tessa Virtue‏ heard the news and took to Twitter to express her excitement:

Listen to “Knocking At The Door,” the song that started it all, below.