Update: Well, that mystery didn’t last too long. Following the release of a pair of seconds-long snippets earlier today, Radiohead has released a full-length stop motion animated music video titled (yes, it’s true!) “Burn the Witch.” Fans know that the band has been working quietly on a this song for years—since right around the time of 2000’s Kid A, in fact—but have never released unto the public.
After more than a decade and a half, the alt rock innovators have finally snagged their white whale. Watch and listen above, and rejoice—you lived to see “Burn the Witch”!
Yesterday, Radiohead wiped all of its social media accounts clean, turning millions of people into online fans and followers of blank space. Today they have returned to the world wide web by posting the same two videos to all of their pages: very short stop-motion animated videos that don’t seem to really tell us a whole lot, but are intriguing nonetheless.
No matter if you go to their website, Facebook page, Twitter account, or Instagram page, you’ll find the following two videos posted or linked to.
We know Radiohead has a new album coming out, expected to be released this June, so it is not crazy to guess this is a new video for one of the songs. That said, from what we know about the music video Paul Thomas Anderson directed for them it wouldn’t appear it was an animated one.
So what is going on here? The first video with the bird isn’t much of a hint of what’s to come, and I can’t profess to recognize whatever song (if any) it is singing. As for the second video, the one that looks like it could be described as True Detective season one meets Davey and Goliath meets The Sound of Music, I did use Shazam to try and see if we could learn anything about it. This was the result I got.
I’m going to say that is not it.
So is this the first single? Is this the first video? The only other information is the “Dead Air Space” title above the video on the website. Is that the name of the song? The album? The concept? It would fit with the “dead space” they turned all of their social media into prior to this.
I said yesterday that no matter what this was, art or PR or something else, it was working already. Well, here we are, trying to figure out what a few seconds of some stop-motion animation is all about, so I was right about that.
We’ll keep an eye out to see if any other videos get posted. In the meantime tell us what you think this is all about in the comments below.
Image: Radiohead
