Written by Lauren Rosier
The psychedelic rock band, Khruangbin, shares new video for their track, “Dearest Alfred,” off their third album, Mordechai. The Houston-based trio’s acclaimed third record was released via Dead Oceans in association with Night Time Stories.
Today, they highlight one of the record’s most emotive tracks, with a pair of videos to accompany both the album version of the video, as well as a brand new remix version by Knxwledge. The song, “Dearest Alfred,” was inspired by a trove of letters that bassist Laura Lee Ochoa‘s grandfather wrote to his twin brother.
Both videos were made by The Kennedys, a internship program led by Preety Mudhar at Wieden+Kennedy London, a creative agency. Eight participants from around the UK came up with ideas, shot and edited, their parts of the film, all from their own homes. Some help came from former Kennedys‘ Sammy Watts-Stanfield with production and Sof Vujanic helping with pick-up shots.
“In a year where communication has a new spin of importance and focus has been put on the postal service, we wanted to make a video highlighting that sentiment for a song based on letters my grandfather sent to his brother,” says Khruangbin’s Laura Lee Ochoa. “Working with The Kennedys, we were able to highlight these feelings from a variety of perspectives and through a variety of mediums–which felt important to the project.
“I’ve been a big fan of The Kennedys since working at W+K, as it gives creatives that lack work experience a chance to gain some amidst the beautiful chaos of real agency life, and feel extremely proud for the opportunity to work with them on such a meaningful project. Our zoom call with them presenting us their ideas for the video was one of my favorite moments of quarantine–I felt incredibly inspired and humbled. This project ended up being two-fold: the original video for ‘Dearest Alfred’ and a remixed video for the remix of ‘Dearest Alfred’ by Knowledge. I love what we made together.”
The differences between the original video and remix are striking. While the original song is laidback, the remix track is completely different. “I love doing remixes so I approached it like everything else,” explains Knxwledge, who’s known for both his own solo work in addition to his work with Anderson .Paak as NxWorries. “I try to smooth it out while making it as hard hitting as possible.”
Of Khruangbin, he says simply, “I’m just a fan like everyone else. They are so unique; the sound they have just resonates with the sounds I grew up loving and most influenced by. Beautiful progressions with perfect minimal, yet so powerful, lyrics. What more can you ask for?”
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