Hamilton Leithauser Gets Ethan Hawke to Preview His New Song 'Here They Come'

Hamilton Leithauser, former frontman of The Walkmen, has paired with Ethan Hawke on an absurdist teaser for his song ‘Here They Come’. The promo was shot in one day at the legendary Cafe Carlyle Jazz Club on the Upper East Side, where Leithauser had just had a five night residency. The story centers on Hamilton sharing his new single with friend Ethan Hawke, after explaining how he is inspired to make music about the private lives of his friends. However, his friends are often perturbed by the discovery. Is Ethan about to discover Hamilton has been airing out the skeletons in his closet?

Director Josh Goleman explains how the project came to pass: “Hamilton reached out to me about creating a video series of him interviewing some of his friends by playing them a song and talking about their thoughts on it. Basically, to have friends talk about the lyrics, arrangement, and what they liked or didn’t like. So we kicked around ideas, wrote questions, and talked through who might be cool to interview. After about a week of silence, Hamilton texted me, ‘Ethan Hawke is going to listen to one of my songs and just beat me up and throw me through the table. No interview. Haha.’ So, that’s what we did instead.” 

The creative relationship between Hamilton, Josh, and Minimal producer Kris Rey-Talley formed years ago with a shared love for untraditional promos, discovered on a music video production for one of his early singles. 

“From my standpoint, I wanted it to be funny, unexpected, and to showcase the song as best we can,” says Josh. “Make it fun to watch, and then you realise you’ve heard almost the whole song. A music video of sorts. We shot the project really really fast. I think we had Ethan for about two hours and finished early. Once you start breaking things, the process really speeds up. Ethan is such an excellent collaborator and absolute dream to work with. He added so many ideas and made the process so fast and creative.”

The video was almost entirely improvisation, with only a rough outline of what was going to happen sketched out prior to the day. 

Minimal is a boutique production company and creative studio. Their name is their philosophy. Doing more with less, Minimal makes great work while keeping the process intuitive and simple. Minimal is what a modern production partner looks like: collaborative, nimble, and highly creative.