Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin Head to Russia in New Video
Back in 2013, the inevitable happened: Missouri indie-pop outfit Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin were flown to Russia to headline the Old New Rock Festival, which was not only sponsored by the Boris Yeltsin Foundation, but set in the town of Yekaterinburg where the former president began his political career. The band documented their entire trek and have compiled the footage for their latest music video, “Young Presidents,” off 2013’s Fly by Wire.
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Directed by Brook Linder (Sky Ferreira, Ariel Pink, Arctic Monkeys, Pink Mountaintops), the clip finds the band trekking through Moscow’s Red Square and hitting the slopes at one of the city’s giant sledding hills. The group then heads over to Yekaterinburg, where they played an acoustic set at a public school (and were later inducted into their Hall of Fame) and were interviewed by various Russian media outlets in front of the world’s only statue of Yeltsin.
The band also got to eat borscht with one of Yeltsin’s former translators — who gifted them seven bottles of vodka — watched a bunch of Russian clubbers get naked and dive into the snow outside the venue and, for a single day, were deemed official cultural ambassadors by the United States consulate.
“We met some amazing people who were so tolerant and welcoming,” the band said in a statement. “That’s what we remember. Things are messed up in Russia, but our experience was in stark contrast to Putin’s politics of corruption and cynicism. We were lucky.”