Ra Ra Riot is excited to be releasing their first new music in five years today, called “The Wish.” The single was co-written and produced by their friend and longtime collaborator Rostam Batmanglij (Remi Wolf, Carly Rae Jepsen, HAIM), mixed by Andrew Maury (Madi Diaz, Tegan and Sara, Shawn Mendes), and mastered by Grammy Award-winning mastering engineer Emily Lazar (Coldplay, Jacob Collier, Beck). The release comes just before Ra Ra Riot joins up with Vampire Weekend for a week of Midwest dates.
“Rostam and I have been longtime collaborators and have gotten to work on all kinds of different projects together over the years. It’s always something fun and exciting and new. When we got into his studio recently, we found we’d both been getting into fingerpicking – some folk stuff, like Fairport Convention, Joni Mitchell, Anne Briggs, Judy Sill, that kind of stuff. And so we just went from there. It started with a riff I had, super rough, with a sort of nebulous story, and he helped simplify the fingerpicking pattern and start molding it into more of a specific story and vibe. Rostam added some organ – Hammond B3 – and some mandolin, and Joey, his assistant, who’s studied Latin percussion, really added a lot of movement to it. Over the course of two trips to LA, we wrote, re-wrote and recorded the song almost in real time, and I think it’s something really new for us. To me, the song’s about the power of imagining a different world – not necessarily in a fantastic or escapist way, but in an empowering way. About manifesting these deeply held wants and desires. Having these powerful dream visions and trying to capture that moment before you fall deeply into dreaming. Rostam and I love working on songs that can read as both happy and sad at the same time and using that tension to amplify and understand the depth of these feelings and visions,” – Ra Ra Riot’s Wes Miles on “The Wish.”
Ra Ra Riot is Wes Miles (vocals), Mathieu Santos (bass), Milo Bonacci (guitar), Rebecca Zeller (violinist) and Kenny Bernard (drummer). The band formed in 2006 and after appearances at CMJ and SXSW, their unique brand of quirky pop had Rolling Stone calling their live show “one of the best indie-rock debuts of the year.” Shortly after, Ra Ra Riot signed to Barsuk and went on to release a series of critically acclaimed full-length albums starting with their highly anticipated debut album The Rhumb Line (2008).
Are you excited that they’re back dropping music?