Although their music isn’t explicitly about nature, Fleet Foxes, more than many other artists, have an aesthetic that makes you think of the outdoors, whether it’s their organic instrumentation, their reverb that sounds like it could be bouncing off a venue wall or a jagged mountain range, or the fact that they’ve worn a ton of flannel shirts in their day. Whatever the case may be, their music begs to be used alongside footage of fish swimming through streams, a starry night as seen through black tree branches, and deer trotting through wild, unkempt grass.
The Jackson Hole Travel & Tourism Board has made that happen in a new promotional video, which is part of the Stay Wild campaign and features Fleet Foxes’ “Sun Giant” set to scenes like the ones described above. The story of how this all came to be is also interesting: Zach DeBlaey, a copywriter for creative agency Colle McVoy who worked on the spot for the tourism board, was the one who was inspired to reach out to the band and set this collaboration in motion, and he says of the process:
“I’ve always been a pretty big Fleet Foxes fan. I’d recently seen them live for the first time at Red Rocks, and their performance really stuck with me. Throughout the fall, I kept rotating through their albums and kept coming back to their song, ‘Sun Giant.’ Something about the simple beauty of it made me instantly think of our Jackson Hole client, and the lyrics seemed to capture the ‘Stay Wild’ spirit. I brought it to my creative director, and, no joke, the very next day, Jackson Hole sent over gorgeous footage from the area asking us if it was something we could use. From there, we cut the video and found the song and visuals worked together pretty spectacularly. We contacted Fleet Foxes and sent the video along with a personal letter about why we were hoping to use this song. They were incredibly generous and worked with us to get this use.”
Watch the spot above.
