Karen O and the Kids: The Rockers of "Where the Wild Things Are"

On October 16th the big-screen live-action version of Maurice Sendak's kiddie-lit classic Where the Wild Things Are arrives in theaters, but you don't have to wait that long to hear some of Karen O and the Kids' (as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' frontlady is billing her crew of collaborators) soundtrack. The disc is out September 29th and first single "All Is Love" will come out August 25th digitally.

Karen O composed music for the soundtrack and co-produced it with Tom Biller of the Afternoons. And Rolling Stone has also learned the list of Kids' rockers includes her YYYs bandmates Brian Chase and Nick Zinner along with Tristan Bechet (Services), Bradford Cox (Deerhunter), Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age, The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs), Aaron Hemphill (Liars), Greg Kurstin (The Bird and the Bee), Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The Greenhornes), Oscar Michel (Gris Gris), Imaad Wasif (New Folk Implosion, Alaska). An untrained children's choir contributes to the songs and soundscapes.

"I got involved because of Spike [Jonze]," Karen told MTV U.K. of her former beau, who co-wrote and directed the film. "I guess there is a childlike innocence about my music or my persona that he always just kind of dialed into. To play on it and it was a really amazing experience and I think what he has accomplished with the film is basically the impossible. There's a lot of stuff that they told me Spike couldn't do that he did it anyway and it was a really inspiring and exciting thing to be a part of."

Last year, when rumors were swirling that the film — adapted by Jonze and Dave Eggers — was in trouble for being too dark and ambitious, Jonze spoke to Rolling Stone, telling us, "We've made the movie we set out to make." He added, "I wanted to make a movie that felt true to me and my experience of being a kid, trying to understand the world and people around me, trying to understand the relationships and wild emotions inside me and the people I was close to. As a kid, there's no road map to navigate any of that. Basically, I wanted to take this nine-year-old kid seriously as a person who is trying to understand the world and himself." Read the full Q&A here.

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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