Jens Lekman shares a cosmic new video for “How We Met, The Long Version”

Jens Lekman | photo by Ellika Henrikson

Jens Lekman recently released his fourth full-length Life Will See You Now, a full-color story tapestry of little moments and big events that the Swedish musician stitches together with ultra-poppy, collaged music. “How We Met, The Long Version” is a prime example and highlight of the record, and this week Lekman shared a cosmic video for the track.

The clip is fairly straightforward: Lekman stands with his guitar, awash in purply pink hues against a backdrop of a swirling, star-filled galaxy. It’s an apt image for the song, as he recounts an experience of love at first sight in the terms of stars and planets aligning.

A bed of disco pulls you into the song, courtesy of Jackie Stoudemire’s 1983 recording “Don’t Stop Dancing.” The strings fan out in to the ether, while a euphoric melody buoys Lekman’s tale of love.

In an interview with The Key’s Ross Hoffman, Lekman talked about his fondness for samples:

I feel like, if I sit down with a guitar to write a song, I will automatically play the same opening chord, every single time, because my hands have learned this routine of writing a song on a guitar, so there’s no element of randomness there. It’s very hard for me to do something unexpected when I sit down with a guitar or a piano, but with samples there’s always that element of what happens if I put together this percussion loop with this string part from an old classical recording…something completely unexpected could come from that. And so I still use it in my composition, I still use it when I write songs, just to get that element of the unexpected.

Watch the video below. Lekman brings Life Will See You Now to Union Transfer for all-ages show on Friday, March 17th, can be found here.