The Avett Brothers have shared a new music video for “We Americans” off the group’s 2019 album Closer Than Together. The animated video chronicles events throughout American history as the brotherly duo sing about coming to terms with their country’s faults.

Closer Than Together, released in October 2019, marked The Avett Brothers’ 10th studio record. Produced by Rick Rubin, the album peaked at #28 on the Billboard 200, and at #2 and #4  respectively on the folk and rock album charts.

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The Avett Brothers recruited Jason Mitcham for the “We Americans” video, and comes as Mitcham’s second collaboration with the outfit following the music video for “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise”. The video takes on the texture of paint, cloaked in stark black and white throughout the piece. The contrast of the two opposite colors parallels the journeys of Seth and Scott Avett from their childhood in North Carolina. The two speak of “growing up with reverence for the red, white, and blue,” and at first it seems like that this might just be another tone-deaf song from two rural white kids who never learned to question the country they grew up in.

Then, just as those pessimistic thoughts begin to form, the brothers personify reaching the age of reason with the line “But the story is complicated and hard to read/Pages of the book obscured or torn out completely.” From there, the Avetts and Mitcham work in tandem to take viewers on an animated history lesson of the United States. As the video moves through the early American colonies to the Industrial Revolution, The Avett Brothers echo the sentiment felt by many American children as they come to terms with the history of their nation. The line “Love in our heats with the pain and the memory” echoes as the song fades out, leaving us all to once again question the legacy of our shared heritage.

Watch the new music video for “We Americans” by The Avett Brothers.

The Avett Brothers — “We Americans” (Official Video)

[Video: theavettbrothers]

[H/T JamBase]