HI CUSTODIAN, a Dirty Projectors short film featuring music from the band’s latest album Swing Lo Magellan, premiered last night at New York City’s prestigious Landmark Sunshine Cinema.  

Songwriter-director Longstreth described the film as “made out of a dream,” adding, “it was so fun getting into these alternate personas, inhabiting them, and I think we came up with some amazing images.”

HI CUSTODIAN stars band members David Longstreth, Amber Coffman, Haley Dekle, Nat Baldwin, and Mike Johnson. It was filmed over the course of five days in late April in several locations in Southern California.  Inspired by music films like Kanye West’s Runaway and Prince’s Purple Rain, it follows band members as they inhabit a variety of characters in a surreal narrative about spiritual death and rebirth. Amber plays a lost and lonely searcher. David plays a yōkai, a shapeshifting undead spirit from Japanese folklore.  Nat plays a truck driver as well as a newborn child. Amber and Haley also feature as girls from the British Midlands, as well as sister Fates in an unindividuated dyad.

The film features several recordings and alternate versions of songs from Swing Lo Magellan including OFFSPRING ARE BLANK, ABOUT TO DIE, GUN HAS NO TRIGGER, SEE WHAT SHE SEEING, THE SOCIALITES, and JUST FROM CHEVRON, in addition to other new and unreleased music from the album sessions.