Passion Pit “Sleepyhead”
A few years ago directors Eli Stonberg and Drew Daly struck up a friendship with a downstairs neighbor in their Boston apartment. His name? Ian Hultquist, who would eventually become keyboardist for a band called Passion Pit. Long before the band made it big, Eli and Drew proposed to make a video for their first single, “Sleepyhead.” With a meager budget of $250, the shoot took place in the band’s practice space during a massive snowstorm.
To help with the director’s ambitious postproduction concepts, Peter Sauvey joined in and created the visual effects in the video. Meanwhile, the band was gaining massive buzz online. Eventually the powers that be decided to make a separate video for their hit song “Sleepyhead”. And so the original video sat shelved away collecting virtual dust…
Now years later, the video has finally surfaced in a major way. “Sleepyhead” has been featured on Stereogum, Pitchfork, Kanye West’s Blog, Tokio Hotel’s blog, Video Static, Hipster Runoff, MOG, Prefix Mag and many more.
Here’s what people are saying -
“Intrigue over the age and origin of the new Passion Pit video for ‘Sleepyhead’ but it’s quality is not in question…cute and DIY, similar in spirit to how the song was created in the first place, in frontman Michael Angelakos’ bedroom…” – Abeano
“A much more OK GO-viral friendly/literal version of the Sleepy Head video…definitely more fun and less artsy – serious than the original.” – Afro Jacks
“DIY lesson on making a video.” – Melophobe
“We can only assume that this video was made by an earnest artistic videomaker whose concept ‘got the shaft’ after Passion Pit got ‘crazy budgets’ and didn’t need the pro bono work of video artist bros.” – Hipster Runoff