The Bats Unveil Single / Video 'Gone To Ground'

Ōtautahi icons The Bats have today shared the third single from their forthcoming tenth studio album Foothills, launching in mid-November via the champs at Flying Nun Records. The assured work of a group that have incredibly spent 38 years making music together, 'Gone To Ground' was written before 2020 sent everyone home for an enforced staycation, yet presciently conveys those all-to-familiar, oceanic feelings of time spent cloistered away. Ever-productive video crew Sports Team, aka Callum Devlin (Hans Pucket) and Annabel Kean (assistant editor of this very website, and daughter of The Bats' Kaye Woodward and Paul Kean), activate household objects / foodstuffs and channel their inner Hendrix to whip up flaming excellent visuals for the moody single, with a surprise stop motion twist, created with the support of NZ On Air.

Robert Scott opened up about The Bats' latest song: “Hide and seek, do we want to be found.... maybe not. Many people have gone to ground in these tricky times. A slight sense of unease pervades the song with the spooky strains of an E bow filtering through the trees. You could walk the marshes and go far. It's funny how you can draw connections between fictitious tales and present day life.”

Co-director Annabel Kean noted: “This is by far the longest we’ve spent on a video. We started about a year ago when we heard an early mix of the song, but the discovery of perpetual motion by way of spinning veges really opened a can of worms. Then it took us three attempts to pluck up the courage to light a guitar on fire.”

'Foothills' releases on Friday 13th November via Flying Nun Records, preorders are available now.