Yo My Saint

Karen O & Michael Kiwanuka team for new song in "Yo! My Saint" short film

Karen O has teamed with director Ana Lily Amirpour and fashion brand Kenzeo for a new nine-minute short film titled Yo! My Saint. The film stars Alex Zhang Hungtai (fka Dirty Beaches), Jessica Henwick (Game of Thrones), and Kiko Mizuhara. For the film, Karen also teamed with the great British soul singer Michael Kiwanuka for a new original song, also called “Yo! My Saint.” You can hear the song and watch the film below. Here’s more:

The muses are heard. YO! MY SAINT is a three-pronged artistic endeavor incorporating music, film, and fashion. It’s not just a song, or a film, or clothes. It’s a project, and the culmination of creativity erupting from KENZO’s Spring/Summer 2018 collection. Linking them altogether is the underlying theme of muses – honoring, celebrating, and re-imagining the instigators and inspirations of creativity.
It all began with KENZO creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim’s graphic, bold, and daring collection, their sartorial mediation on pioneering model Sayoko Yamaguchi and music icon Ryuichi Sakamoto. “We talked about Sayoko being the historic muse, and Ryuichi, who we love and are obsessed with, being our modern muse,” says Humberto. The all-Asian cast runway show was groundbreaking and emotionally resonant.

Backstage they were greeted by onlookers moved to tears at seeing such an inclusive statement. The torch was then passed to Yeah Yeah Yeah’s front-person Karen O. Karen composed a profound narrative with “YO! MY SAINT” a track that builds to an arresting crescendo and the fades into a gorgeous lullaby coda. Ana Lily Amirpour, the visionary behind the exemplary Iranian vampire noir A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night helmed the cinematic expression of the venture and worked closely with Karen (who also has a brief cameo). “Humberto and I are technically the producers,” explains Carol. “The beautiful part about this is it’s two women that decided to make this film together. It’s an amazing artistic endeavor and a conversation between two women. A female musician and a female director. That’s kind of the starting point of this. We’re so excited for it to finally come out.”

Karen O re-activated Yeah Yeah Yeahs last year with an expanded reissue of Fever To Tell, a documentary, and their first proper shows in four years (which were awesome). They’ll keep it going when they headline hometown festival Governors Ball in June.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=p3CjIDcAePM