The Girls Are Back: Haim's 'Summer Girl' Video Is All About That Sax

Haim are back, and not a moment also soon. Just in time for the dog days of summer, the trio of SoCal sisters have returned with the warm and jazzy "Summer Girl," which they debuted at a show in L.A. Earlier this month, and which marks their first new music since 2017's Something to Tell You.


Danielle takes lead vocals here, and in the accompanying video, she leads sisters Este and Alana via streets of L.A., Shedding layers upon layers of clothing up until they get down to something more seasonally suitable. "I'm your summer girl, I'm your summer girl," she gently reassures, glancing at a guy with a massive saxophone trailing her. They eventually come face-to-face at a movie theater, where she instructs him, "Walk beside me / Not beyond me / Feel my unconditional love." Soak up all those fuzzy feelings in the Paul Thomas Anderson-directed video below.


In a Instagram post on Tuesday (July 30), Danielle opened up about the new song's inspiration, revealing that she wrote it around the time her partner, producer Ariel Rechtshaid, was sick.


"I wrote it around the time my partner was diagnosed with cancer a couple years back while we were making STTY. (He's in the clear right now she wrote. "We were touring on and off at this time and every time we were on the phone together or any time As soon as I would come house in between shows, I wanted to be this light that shined on him as soon as he was feeling very dark. I wanted to be his hope any time while he was feeling hopeless. So I kept singing these lines – I'm your sunny girl/ I'm your fuzzy girl/ I'm your summer girl – over the bass line. Summer girl stuck."


Danielle took the demo to Rostam Batmanglij, who wrote the sax melody and added the bass parts, intentionally keeping the musical cues from Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" as a homage to him. And just a couple weeks later, Haim delivers the "Summer Girl" video as a way of "releasing new music as we're working on it." Hopefully that demonstrates album No. 3 is on the way!