In Oklahoma City, two veterans of kaleidoscopic tours and infinite nights behind the kit and strings have conspired to summon something searing. Brainwasher, the invention of Matthew Duckworth Kirksey and Tommy McKenzie (The Flaming Lips), steps into view with Burning Cars (feat. Spaceface), a track that bends the air like heat rising from asphalt. Out today via Mothland, it is a signal fire, an ignition point ahead of the group’s decade long-laboured debut, 39 Lightyears from Heaven, due October 24th.
The song is restless, almost radiant in its combustion of forms. Trip-hop rhythms grind against shoegaze haze, new wave circuitry hums beneath, and industrial weight presses down. There is funk, there is fracture, there is the glint of starlight cutting through. The collaboration with Spaceface drapes voices like silver over the machinery, a celestial chorus counterbalancing the track’s volatile charge.
Lyrically, Burning Cars turns the blade against political platitudes and the narcotic comfort of half-truths. Repeated phrases move upward in pitch, a mantra that promises renewal, while a sharp refrain insists on doubt: if things are truly getting better, then why do streets still blaze with unrest? It is a song born in contradiction: hope at war with cynicism, progress colliding with spectacle.
Kirksey reflects with blunt clarity: “A little while back, while we were on tour in Europe with The Flaming Lips, our label asked about a video for Burning Cars,” he says. “One day, when we were playing in Cologne, we found out the city was evacuating a 10-mile radius to defuse three undetonated WWII bombs—just a normal part of reality there. The next day I was walking around Berlin, seeing all these powerful monuments to the war, thinking about what it must’ve been like. We actually wrote the song during the George Floyd protests—it’s about how the world tells us things are getting better, but it feels like we’re not learning anything. It all felt connected.”
That connection carries into the visuals. The accompanying video, directed by Flaming Lips confidant Blake Studdard, was shot in Germany, under streetlamps and shadows of ruin. It is fitting that the setting, once a hub of tragedy in the human experience, has flipped into a source of hope and artistic expression.
“After our Berlin show, I grabbed Blake and Tommy and said, let’s go film something. We wandered around with a battery-powered light and camera until 2am. The next night, we played in a repurposed Nazi bunker and filmed more. These cities still carry the weight of the past—and this video became a way of holding onto that reminder.”
Watch the video for “Burning Cars” below:
Listen to Burning Cars below and order 39 Lightyears From Heaven here.
Post-Punk.com caught up with Brainwasher about the single, the video, and the long process for creating 39 Lightyears from Heaven.
How did ‘Burning Cars’ come together creatively, and how important was it for you to collaborate with your label-mates Spaceface—fellow artists known for crafting genre-defiant soundscapes that challenge norms and question authority?
We felt like we were pretty much done with the song, but I kept having this feeling that song felt too serious… too hopeless. The Spaceface guys were in Oklahoma City, working with our producer, Taylor Johnson, and we were hanging up at the studio listening to this inspiring and sunsoaked record they were making. I think we just kinda of commandeered their session, and had them start singing on the spot. They saved the song with this great, almost doo-wop-ish little vocal tag.
The video for ‘Burning Cars’ was filmed spontaneously during your European tour, including scenes shot in a repurposed Nazi bunker. How did that experience—and the weight of those historically charged locations—shape the visual storytelling and emotional tone of the track?
Yeah, We’ve always been obsessed with that great German Brutalist architecture. You can’t help but feel the weight of the past in those epic German Cities. I love music that is inspired by the places it was created, (my mind immediately goes to Iceland, and Bjork, and Sigor Ros) and allthough there was happenstance involved with us being there at the time we needed to make a video, it felt like the music and the setting were somehow meant for each other. I also think the franticness of Blake Studdards editing helps with that connection as well.
Your debut album has been over a decade in the making. What finally pushed you to release 39 Lightyears from Heaven now, and how has your sound—or the world around you—evolved in that time?
Yeah, It had been my new year’s resolution to finish this record for like the last four years… I think once some friends started hearing the songs come together they really pushed us to finish it. Especially Wayne, the singer in our other band The Flaming Lips. Just to know that he liked it. And once he gets his mind on something, he’ll push you through the finish line like no one else can. We were wonding if this music that took over 10 years to finish would even feel relevant, but with the way the world has evolved, I think all art and music is more importand than ever. If it can make anyone feel connected to this ugly planet, or the way they feel about navigating it, then that makes us feel fulfilled.
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