Silversun Pickups
Jul 10, 2020
Silversun Pickups have released a cover of "Toy Soldiers," the 1989 number-one hit originally recorded by pop singer Martika. Recorded in January and produced by Butch Vig, this track comes a little over a year after the band released their fifth studio album, “Widow’s Weeds.” “Toy Soldiers” is out now everywhere via the group’s own label, New Machine Recordings through Q Prime. Silversun Pickups’ rendition of the song also comes with a new music video directed by Claire Marie Vogel and Aaron Hymes, with animation by Hymes.
“We were thinking about songs from the ’80s that we loved growing up, that had a big radio moment and was part of our cultural DNA,” explained Brian Aubert of Silversun Pickups. “A song that you know right away when you hear it. We thought of ‘Toy Soldiers’ as a great example of this and decided we should try and record it.”
He continues, “There’s something about this song that hits me emotionally – this song has always hit me that way. At first, it wasn’t about the lyrics, but the feel of it. To be honest, I was not initially aware what the song was about, but listening to the lyrics, it was clearly about addiction. Someone else’s addiction. It’s pretty painful and very personal. You realize it doesn’t matter what the shell is, what the production is, what the era is…this is obviously a very personal story that at first I wasn’t sure we could touch. We ended up framing it into our own world and we think it works.”
Silversun Pickups was formed in Los Angeles in 2000. The band is made up of Brian Aubert, Nikki Monninger, Christopher Guanlao and Joe Lester. They released their debut EP, “Pikul,” in 2005, and their debut album, “Carnavas,” in 2006. Their second album, “Swoon,” was released in 2009. “Neck Of The Woods,” the band's third album, came out in 2012 followed by their fourth album, “Better Nature,” in 2015.