“Thank you for voting, and here’s a serenade if you’re out there standing in a long line,” Karen O wrote on social media when posting an at-home performance of Despair as the US went to the polls for the 2020 presidential election.
Despair is just about the last great song we had from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs before their hiatus in 2013, but there has been a lot more activity in recent times, these isolation performances from Karen O a regular feature of this year’s lockdown which at least did help to mark their 20th anniversary as a band.
The increased activity really got underway thanks to the reissue of their debut album Fever To Tell, leading to a live comeback in 2017. “Here it is on vinyl for the first time in 10 years plus a time capsule of photos, demos (1st ever recorded,) a mini film documenting our near downfall and other fun memorabilia, from the turn of the century NYC, made with love and the usual blood, sweat and tears of Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” they said at the time.