Saint Motel, Brigitte Calls Me Baby

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Oswaldo Cepeda

The four members of Saint Motel on a pair of couches.

Saint Motel

media release: Saint Motel shared additional dates for their upcoming North American tour. Furthermore, they just released the music video for their crowd-favorite new song, “Stay Golden,” off of their upcoming album, Saint Motel and the Symphony in the Sky, due to arrive in February 2025. 

Directed by A/J Jackson and Mario Contini, the music video for “Stay Golden” is the perfect visual accompaniment to the track’s upbeat nature. The video depicts the band on tour, showing a candid look into their life on the road, with the use of film shooting adding a new, unique perspective. 

“It was amazing to be able to shoot real film on this tour, my friend and longtime collaborator Mario Contini, along with his B cam operator Ben went on tour with us for a couple days and we shot everything from Super 8mm, to a 1991 mini DV camera,” explains A/J. “It gave us a timeless multi layered perspective that we aren’t usually lucky enough to get.”

In October, the band shared their recent single “Steady Hand,” a bold, anthemic track that sees Saint Motel further embracing a new sonic era. The single follows on the heels of first album offering “Stay Golden,” produced by BEKON (Kendrick Lamar, Hozier, H.E.R). These two tracks mark the first release since the band’s 2023 singles “Slowly Spilling Out”, “Fine Wine”, and “Everyone’s A Guru Now”, which received praise from Billboard, Entertainment Tonight and more, and marked the marked the first new music from Saint Motel since the release of their acclaimed 2021 studio album The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. Alongside the singles, the quartet has been headlining The Awards Show North American and European tours, selling out venues across North America. The final leg, seeing the band bring their electric live shows to the United Kingdom and Ireland, is set to kick off next month.

In 2021, The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack arrived to widespread acclaim from People, SPIN, Paste, Ladygunn, Billboard, American Songwriter, and more, and saw the band deliver an unforgettable performance of lead single “Van Horn” on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!. Additionally, the band teamed up with the Fames Orchestra of Macedonia and renowned film composer Duke Bojadziev, to bring The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack to life in its entirety on stage during a global livestream. The show notably featured the film score transitions previously composed by Duke, live in the Macedonian capital of Skopje. In support of the LP, they headlined The Director’s Cut North American and European tours, selling out venues on both continents in 2021.

About Saint Motel

Joyfully blurring genres, Saint Motel showcase an opulent sound complimentary to their ambitious scope. Streamed and viewed over half-a-billion times, the platinum-selling Los Angeles quartet magnify this vision with immersive live experiences and one unpredictable move after another. The group initially came together at film school before introducing themselves on 2012’s Voyeur. Signing to Elektra, their 2014 My Type EP boasted both the gold-certified title track “My Type” and fan favorite “Cold Cold Man.” In 2016, saintmotelevision yielded the smash “Move.” Flipping the script once again, the musicians reimagined the record with a series of history-making first-of-their-kind innovations: an award-winning Virtual Reality version and an Augmented Reality version. In addition to unforgettable sets everywhere from Coachella and Lollapalooza to Bonnaroo, the band lit up shows such as NBC’s TODAY, ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden, among others. In 2019, Saint Motel launched their most ambitious undertaking yet, unveiling their third full-length album in three parts. First up, they uncovered The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Pt. 1 powered by the shimmy and shake of Alternative Top 15 lead single “Van Horn.” Between packing houses coast to coast on headline jaunts and earning acclaim from People, Billboard, and more, the four-piece rolled out Pt. 2 throughout 2020. Fans received the full picture of Saint Motel’s vision with the complete The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack studio album in 2021. Last year, the band released a handful of radiant singles, “Fine Wine,” “Everyone’s A Guru,” “Slowly Spilling Out,” marking their first new music since 2021. This year the band kickstarted a new era with “Stay Golden,” and the announcement of their fourth studio album Symphony In The Sky, arriving in 2025 via Elektra.

Saint Motel is: A/J Jackson (vocals), Aaron Sharp (guitar), Dak Lerdamornpong (bass), and Greg Erwin (drums).

ATO Records' buzzing Chicago five-piece Brigitte Calls Me Baby has released a new cover of the George Michael classic “Careless Whisper.”

"Careless Whisper” has become a fan favorite in the band’s acclaimed live show over the past year. “George Michael’s voice and songs have always resonated with me, but there was no specific pursuit of covering one of his songs until a very natural and organic version was developed in our show,” explains frontman Wes Leavins. “With any song that we cover there is only truly one requirement: there must be something we can bring to the song that doesn’t already exist within the original or any version otherwise. There must be an opportunity to present ourselves within the track. The case of ‘Careless Whisper’ is no different.”

The new single arrives after the release of the band’s breakthrough debut LP, The Future Is Our Way Out, lauded by critics as “a debut album that may just rival the classics” (Clash Magazine), showcasing their unique sound that has allowed them to “carve out a triumph of their own” (NME). In lead singer Wes Leavins' words, "It's all about drama and power, both in the instrumentation and the vocal approach."

Brigitte Calls Me Baby has gained momentum on the national TV front since the release of their album. The band made their TV debut on CBS Saturday followed by performances on Jimmy Kimmel Live and the Kelly Clarkson Show.

The band is set to launch their 2025 tour at Kanda Square Hall in Tokyo, Japan next month. This spring, they will be touring across the U.S. with a mix of headline shows and opening dates for Saint Motel.

ABOUT BRIGITTE CALLS ME BABY

With their name nodding to frontman Wes Leavins’ teenage pen-pal correspondence with iconic French actress, Brigitte Bardot, the Chicago-based five-piece emerged in early 2023 and soon scored a breakout hit with “Impressively Average”—a sublimely shimmering anthem that shot to the Top 10 at Triple A radio, setting the band on a swift rise that’s recently included embarking on a headline tour with sold-out dates across the country. Now, with their debut LP, The Future Is Our Way Out, Brigitte Calls Me Baby shares a body of work that ingeniously spans genres and eras, merging the lavish romanticism of mid-century pop with the frenetic energy and spiky intensity of early-millennium indie-rock. Centered on Leavins’ hypnotically crooning vocal work, the result is a rare convergence of sophistication, style, and unabashed sincerity.

The band’s unusual path began when frontman and songwriter Wes Leavins moved from Texas to Chicago after high school. After arriving in Chicago, he joined forces with bassist Devin Wessels, drummer Jeremy Benshish, and guitarists Jack Fluegel and David Rosendahl; and the group began gigging locally when Graceland came calling. Leavins was recruited to record music for Baz Luhrmann's 2022 film Elvis. While on set, he met the Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb (Jason Isbell, Brandi Carlile) and the two hit it off.