Music

Matt and Kim: Behind the scenes of their new video "It's Alright"

by Nicole Villeneuve

If you’ve ever asked Matt & Kim how they formed, you’ll know their standard response is a variation of the same shrugged four words: “It was an accident.”

In the early 2000s at Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, film major Matt Johnson and illustration major Kim Schifino were friends messing around on instruments (Kim wanted to learn to play drums; Matt wanted to figure out an old keyboard he’d had since he was a teenager) when they got prematurely added to a basement show in Queens by their friends in Japanther.

Their name got shortened from the Japanther-assigned Matthew and Kimberley, but not much else has changed—almost 10 years and four albums later, the duo’s simple drum/keyboard set-up remains. Their enterprising and uncompromising DIY approach has ensured their creative sustainability. And their trademark positivity characterizes every interaction, show, album, and increasingly ambitious video work, giving their whole career the simple, giddy sheen of those salad days.

Photo by Stephen McGill/AUX. See more here.

Matt & Kim’s latest video, “It’s Alright,” required intense professional choreography training and resulted in injury by sheets and feathers. “While we were recording this song, I couldn’t not dance in the studio,” Kim says. “It is my favourite song on the album.”

“We have fun making videos, but a lot of time it’s really stressful,” adds Matt, who is often the brains behind the band’s clips. “I love coming up with the ideas, but production is stressful. I worked in film before we did the band, and I would always be so stressed out before shoots. And that’s still how I get on all these music videos. I never feel ready. Remember [for this one] when we were like, ‘we’re not ready to do this.’ Then we just did it, girl!”

Watch their behind-the-scenes breakdown of pain and booty shots above.

“It’s Alright” is in video and in song somewhat of a Matt & Kim template—stripped down, creative, joyful. “The last album, there were certain things that felt over produced about it,” Matt told AUX in an interview late last year. “We wanted this one [Lightning] to be a little more raw, have a little more personality, like certain things that we had on an album called Grand that we recorded ourselves having no clue what we were doing, so we decided to go back and do this 100 per cent ourselves again. It’s just me and Kim, in a room, doing these things that I feel just keeps it pure. It’s not too many ideas going in and too much compromise. It’s just what we want.”

Watch a behind-the-scenes breakdown of Matt & Kim’s viral Harlem Shake video.

This feature originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of AUX Magazine. Download and subscribe for free in the App Store.