Stephen Malkmus is an indie legend, so presumably, it wasn’t hard for the Pavement leader to get some of today’s brightest indie stars to lend him a hand for his new “Shadowbanned” video.
The video is mostly clips of indie-rock stars singing the song but with augmented reality Malkmus masks on their faces, and it features Conan production assistant Conor Oberst, Mac DeMarco, Kurt Vile, Sharon Van Etten, Jason Schwartzman, Kim Gordon, Orono Noguchi from Superorganism, and Mary Lattimore, among others. The other guests in the video are Eric Koston, Joe Beddia, Matt Korvette, Jake Morris, Polly Roche, Keshav Purushotham, Sharmila Banerjee, Lucía Castellanos, Charlotte Gfeller, Qais Essar, Maple Judd, Lia Wang, Lara Vinciguerra, Pernille Krogvig, and Frederike Wetzels.
Director Jan Lankisch says of the clip, “The video was inspired by reading about female singers and musicians who were Photoshopped from their album covers by an Iranian music streaming site. […] Identity is a matter of design. People like to play with characters and pretend to be someone else.”
“Shadowbanned” is the latest taste of Malkmus’ new album, Traditional Techniques, which is set for release on March 6 via Matador Records. The new song follows “Xian Man,” which Malkmus shared last month.
Watch the “Shadowbanned” video above.
Traditional Techniques is out 03/06 via Matador Records. Pre-order it here.
