Arcade Fire Teaming With Spike Jonze on Short Film

Spike Jonze ranks among the most creative film directors in Hollywood, but he's still down to work on intriguing music video projects. According to a report on /film, Jonze will team up with Arcade Fire — whose "Wake Up" served as the stirring backdrop for Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are trailer — on a short film likely based around one of the songs on the Montreal collective's upcoming third album. The shoot will reportedly take place in Austin, Texas, and feature actors in their late-teens in a story about "friends growing apart."

While Arcade Fire would not comment on the report, MTV reports that Jonze's reps pretty much confirmed the project. As Rolling Stone previously reported, Jonze and Kanye West released a short film last year titled We Were Once a Fairytale, a strange 12-minute tale of isolation and depravity soundtracked by Kanye's 808s & Heartbreak single "See You in My Nightmares." It's unclear when Arcade Fire's collabo with Jonze will be unveiled, but count on it emerging right around the time the band release their new album in the late summer.

In addition to filming with Jonze, Arcade Fire will also return to the summer festival circuit with new songs during headlining slots at Lollapalooza, Reading and Leeds.

Related Stories:

• Spike Jonze Talks Kanye's "We Were Once A Fairytale" Short Film
• "Where the Wild Things Are": Exclusive Look Behind the Film's Stunning Music and Visuals

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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