Air Waves’ music has consistently been featured alongside artists like Tame Impala and Sharon Van Etten—the latter of which they collaborated with in 2010—since the late 2000s, though unlike those artists Nicole Schneit’s initial vision for the project as a bedroom-pop concept has remained intact over the course of four albums. In fact, the single that arrives today with news of their latest record entitled The Dance—which features contributions from Cass McCombs, Frankie Cosmos, Luke Temple, and more peers—manages to channel stadium-ready rock while maintaining the DIY-space vocal reach and lo-fi backing beat they’ve mastered over the past two decades. In doing so “Wait” lands at an odd-yet-undoubtedly-compelling intersection of Brooklyn’s late-’00s bedroom electro-pop boom and Joshua Tree–era U2.
With the album’s title in mind rather than the lyrics of “demon lovers” that populate “Wait,” the track’s video sees Schneit singing among dancers—on land, in water, and on ice. “As a kid I played lots of sports and I think being involved in sports is what helped me get through adolescence, so [directors Becca Brooks Morrin and Charlotte Hornsby’s] idea seemed fitting with the song,” they share. “We noticed the lyrics about crossing the line. That made us think about racing, but we wanted to honor the upbeat movement of the song so we loosely focused on putting dancing sports into the video. We tried to include activities that lent themselves to the flowing beat of Air Waves’ music.”
Watch the video below, and pre-order The Dance here.
