"Sidewalk Cracks" is a pretty song that features the powerful vocals of Louisville's Sydney Sleadd and her band The Swarm. It's so pretty that it might take a beat to realize it's about the end-times of civilization as we know it. The new video for the song which appears on their album Creature Untamed was just released and makes it very clear that what feels like an apocalypse is in motion. I asked Sydney about the origin of the song and concept for the video:
"The song itself was actually written in January of 2020. I had just watched the movie “The Big Short” which really breaks down all the layers of corruption that went into creating the housing bubble and subsequent recession of 2008, and I just had this eerie feeling that we were back there again. There were whisperings of a virus and this palpable tension - and of course not even two months later we were in “unprecedented times”.
Then, we shot this music video in May of 2024, which was before the LA fires, the hurricanes and floods - all of which mirror scenes that are depicted in that video, because we felt then what is exacerbated right now - that feeling that “It’s coming down”. In the video we put these images and the CGI of us in a nuclear bunker in direct contrast to this nostalgic 1990s carefree playfulness of us on a playground and in a bounce house - I think because there’s this longing to go back to that time where things felt more hopeful."
Check out the video for "Sidewalk Cracks" below and catch the band live on March 28, 2025 when they celebrate the 1 year anniversary of their album Creature Untamed at DeadBird Studio in Louisville, KY.
