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Phoebe Bridgers' breakthrough single "Kyoto" shot her into indie rock stardom and earned her a Grammy nod, now she's recruiting three other up-and-coming stars to remix the song: The Marías, Bartees Strange and Glitch Gum.
“I remember seeing Phoebe years ago at an open mic here in Los Angeles, and I knew right off the bat that she was really special," a member of The Marías recalled. "Working on this remix was a sort of full circle moment for us. ‘Kyoto’ is an amazing song as-is, so with the remix we were just curious to see what it would sound like with the vocal slowed down and adding some of our favourite synth sounds behind it.”
“I wanted to find a way to make this song hit in a completely different way, but still retain some of the big and small moments that make the song special to me," Strange explained of his reworking. "At first I was thinking through how I could use the stems, but the more I got into it the more I wanted to take it somewhere else entirely. Crushing tune, glad I could mess around with it.”
Bridgers asked Glitch Gum to be a part of the project after he dropped a hyperpop version of the song last year. “All I know is one day, when I was in between Zoom classes last Fall, I thought, ‘Man, what if Phoebe Bridgers did hyperpop?’ That idea turned into a 30-second snippet of ‘Kyoto’, which turned into a full song, which turned into working with Phoebe and her team to make this little quarantine project come full circle in ways I could never even fathom," he said of the experience. “It was so fun deconstructing the musical realms of both Phoebe and I and combining them into something that filled the hyperpop-indie-crossover-shaped hole in my brain. I am just really happy with how it turned out and forever thankful for Phoebe, her friends, and their continuous support.”