American Football release a video for Wake Her Up

American Football have shared a video for "Wake Her Up," DIY and Spin reported August 5. The Wisp-featuring song comes from the band's self-titled fourth album, LP4, released this spring on Polyvinyl. Directed by skate filmmaker Ty Evans with Oscar-winning director Cord Jefferson and photographer Atiba Jefferson, the video follows frontman Mike Kinsella and Wisp on nighttime bike rides through Los Angeles while dreamlike images of Paris play around them.

American Football are the Midwest emo band Mike Kinsella built out of Champaign, Illinois in the late 1990s, known for the hushed, interlocking guitar sound of their self-titled 1999 debut. "Wake Her Up" is one of the more melodic, pop-leaning songs on LP4, part of the band's continuing run within indie rock, with Kinsella jokingly calling it the band's "best Smiths impression to date."

Kinsella says the "wake her up" melody existed for a while before the band heard a Wisp song and knew she had to sing the line. The lyric appears to be about the "girl in the river Seine," he says, but is actually about the boy who fell in love with her. Jefferson previously worked with the band on their "Uncomfortably Numb" video featuring Hayley Williams, and later introduced the band to Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates.

Evans said the goal was a visual approach that felt "both cinematic and experimental," using technology and practical effects to build something audiences had not seen before. Jefferson called the video's projected imagery "the background and key light" at once, and said the project was personal: he has loved American Football since he "stole their first record from my college radio station 25 years ago."

The video arrives on the release calendar as American Football launches the Midwest leg of its 2026 world tour, kicking off in Cleveland on August 7 following sold-out runs across North America, Europe and Asia. The band has already reunited with Wisp for a live performance of "Wake Her Up" at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theatre, with other stops bringing out Williams for "Uncomfortably Numb" and Rainer Maria's Caithlin De Marrais for "Blood On My Blood." The tour continues through North and Latin America with support from Nine Perfect Lives, Circling Girl, Harmless, Alameda and she's green.