haim

Haim share new single "Summer Girl" w/ video directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Haim’s mellow, saxophone-seasoned new single, “Summer Girl”  — their first new music since 2017’s Something to Tell You — came out of Danielle Haim’s response to her partner, producer Ariel Rechtshaid’s cancer diagnosis, with a little extra inspiration from Lou Reed:

This song started out as a garage band demo in my phone with just a bass line, drums, some gibberish and a doot doot doot little melody. I wrote it around the time my partner was diagnosed with cancer a couple years ago while we were making STTY. (he’s in the clear now!) We were touring on and off at this time and every time we were on the phone with each other or when I would come home in between shows, I wanted to be this light that shined on him when he was feeling very dark. I wanted to be his hope when he was feeling hopeless. So I kept singing these lines – I’m your sunny girl/ I’m your fuzzy girl/ I’m your summer girl – over the bass line. Summer girl stuck. Fast forward to a couple months ago -I remembered this demo and pulled it up from my phone. I brought it to my friend Rostam to see if he wanted to work on it. he wrote the sax part within the first couple minutes of working on it and it all clicked. We were kinda joking about how the doot doot doot part reminded us of Walk on the Wild Side and then he put this stand up bass part on top of the electric bass part and It sounded amazing! The palette was there- v inspired by Lou. And we kept it that way. I brought it back to my partner Ariel- where the inspo first started – and he put some finishing touches on it and here we are !

Previous collaborator Paul Thomas Anderson directed the video which you can watch below.