Exclusive Video Premiere: ‘Spanish Peaks,’ Weekender

ABOVE: WEEKENDER

Philadelphia-based four-piece Weekender mix blissed-out melodies with the loose guitars of your favorite ‘80s shoegazers (a little bit Galaxie 500, a little bit Jesus and Mary Chain). The band’s new video for “Spanish Peaks,” from its self-titled debut EP, sees the quartet combing archival clips and its own lo-fi recordings for an impressionistic exploration of the natural world. As it happens, the song was inspired by a trip lead singer Derek Sheehan took to Spain to visit his brother Nic—also the band’s drummer. “He was studying in Salamanca, so I flew to Madrid and took a train to see him,” says Sheehan. “I had been to Spain before, but only to the south of Madrid. The train ride through the Sierra de Guadarrama range was beautiful—I didn’t know Spain had snow-capped peaks! For me, traveling is a time for reflection and introspection while discovering a new place, so that mindset and the scenery inspired this song.”

In keeping with the meditative mindset of the track’s beginnings, the visuals show the band lounging jn a forested landscape as the occasional New Age-y symbol floats by. (The spaced-out geometry dovetails nicely with the song’s psych-rock leanings.)  “Over the course of a year, my girlfriend Kellie and I had gone on random day shoots at cool places around Pennsylvania, so we had quite a bit of footage compiled,” explains Sheeehan. “[Director] Alex Braddock dug up some great found footage, and the final product was a collaboration between us.” However, the song isn’t just a walk in the park—literally or figuratively. “To me, the video is about the complex relationship that humans have with the natural world,” says Sheehan. “We care for and destroy it and in turn nature does the same; however, we depend more heavily on the natural world than it depends on us, so we have to be careful not to take this symbiotic partnership for granted.”

SPANISH PEAKS IS OUT NOW VIA PAPERCUP MUSIC. WEEKENDER WILL PERFORM IN NEW YORK CITY AT PIANOS ON DECEMBER 11. FOR MORE ON THE BAND, VISIT ITS WEBSITE