Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal
2008 · Directed by Sean Pecknold
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Best comments
1.“I always thought this song was less 'Christmas song' and more 'oblique murder ballad.'”
More comments
- 2.“Why is no one discussing the clay art? Fools.”
- 3.“A month after I first saw this video in 2009, I was at a friend's art showing in Seattle and asked a guy what he did for a living. 'Stop-motion animation,' he said. 'No way – I recently saw this video by Fleet Foxes!' I went on about how amazing it was... and he said, 'Thanks, I made it.' We've been really good friends ever since.”
The story
This is the video that made Sean Pecknold the band's visual guy. Sean is the older brother of Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold, and Robin asked him to make it in March 2008. Sean had sculpted clay characters before but had never built a full working puppet. He figured it out. With a small Seattle crew – Chris Rodgers, Paul Maupoux and stop-motion animator Britta Johnson – he built miniature sets and puppets and shot them frame by frame, working late for about two weeks.
The result is rough and handmade on purpose. A gnome who looks a lot like Father Time brings the natural world to life around him and then lets it die, round and round, the same way the song's harmonies loop back on themselves. Hands move, eyes close, a band member headbangs. Robin later said the video is darker than the song.
The song barely runs two and a half minutes, and Robin has called its words fairly meaningless, admitting the opening harmony was partly meant to make people laugh. Bella Union boss Simon Raymonde was thinking about shutting his label down until he heard the demo and signed the band. Pitchfork ranked it the second-best song of 2008, the album went platinum, and Sean has made eight Fleet Foxes videos so far.
