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Mar 11, 2016 By Christopher Roberts Rostam

Rostam Batmanglij recently announced that he had left Vampire Weekend and would be releasing music under his first name. At the time he also shared a new solo song, “EOS.” Now Batmanglij has shared another new song, “Gravity Don’t Pull Me,” and a video for it. The single is out now via XL and you watch the video below.

The multi-instrumentalist was a founding member of Vampire Weekend but has also been actively involved in other projects, such as producing Ra Ra Riot’s latest album and Discovery, his side-project with Ra Ra Riot vocalist Wes Miles.

Batmanglij and Josh Goleman directed the clip, which features dancers Jack Grabow and Sam Asa Pratt. Batmanglij wrote at length about the video in a press release:

“After the release of the Discovery LP in 2009 I began to see people posting videos of themselves choreographing sections of songs from the album. It was then I realized I really wanted to make a dance video.

In 2010 I came across a YouTube video Jack Grabow posted when he was a senior in high school of himself improvising dance to the song ‘I Think Ur a Contra.’ I was really proud of the drum parts I’d written for the end of the song and I felt like he was able to capture those rhythms in a serious way-I got a feeling he understood what I was getting at in a way that I wondered if anyone ever would.

In 2012 I finally got in touch with him about collaborating on a project. He was really into the idea, but I didn’t know what the right song could be at that time.

When I finished a version of ‘Gravity Don’t Pull Me’ in the fall of 2015, Jack was one of the first people I sent it to. I was pretty clear on what I wanted - Jack to choreograph a dance to be mirrored by another dancer for a symmetrically shot performance on camera. He chose to bring in Sam Asa Pratt. The two had been in the same dance club in high school and I recognized Sam from a video he’d posted of himself dancing to the song ‘Osaka Loop Line’ from the Discovery album.

The final version of ‘Gravity Don’t Pull Me’ includes Sam and Jack performing the choreography they collaborated on and also improvised sections of the dance.”