Earlier this year, Fleet Foxes experienced an unprecedented level of success. The group’s collaboration with Post Malone, “Love/Hate Letter To Alcohol,” marked the first time a Fleet Foxes song ever cracked the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The accolade is merely a figurative coronation for one of today’s most influential indie rock bands, but it’s certainly opening new doors for the Robin Pecknold-led act. One such portal is in the newly-released, “A Sky I’ve Never Met,” a stunning collaboration with Brazilian singer/guitarist Tim Bernardes that appears on the soundtrack to the upcoming Amazon Prime documentary, Wildcat.
Fleet Foxes finally toured their 2020 album, Shore, this year, and Bernardes was the band’s direct support (Bernardes’ latest album, Mil Coisas Invisíveis is very much worth a spin too). Bernardes lends his gentle voice and strums to the inspiring tune, which also appears midway through the trailer for Wildcat. The film, follows the path of an Afghanistan war veteran who was medically discharged with PTSD. The former soldier, Harry Turner, felt like “life wasn’t worth living” before arriving in an unprotected part of the Amazon rainforest. There, he finds purpose and redemption in caring for a baby ocelot who is being rehabilitated for life in the wild.
Pecknold said he was touched by the film and explained how its meaning fed the creation of the original song:
“I was inspired by how the film employed unconventional means to arrive at something universally moving, and was struck by all the collisions inherent in the film’s conceit — between species, between hemispheres, between individuals, between the psychological and the natural. In hotel rooms and in borrowed studios, on time stolen from a world tour, I put this song together. It was an honor to be asked to make a song that could serve as an end-cap to this unique and affecting story and to collaborate with Tim again.”
Listen to “A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen” above and watch the trailer for Wildcat below. Wildcat arrives in select theaters on 12/21 and globally on Prime Video on 12/30.
