The acclaimed rock band Pink Floyd is reuniting and releasing a new single in support of Ukraine, the band’s first new original music since 1994.
All proceeds from the new track, “Hey Hey Rise Up,” will go toward Ukrainian humanitarian relief, the English band behind the legendary Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall albums announced in a statement on Thursday.
“We, like so many, have been feeling the fury and the frustration of this vile act of an independent, peaceful democratic country being invaded and having its people murdered by one of the world’s major powers,” the band’s 76-year-old guitarist David Gilmour, who has a Ukrainian daughter-in-law and grandchildren, said in a statement.
The song was recorded last Wednesday and features a vocal performance by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the Ukrainian band Boombox.
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Pink Floyd said that Khlyvnyuk, who left his band to join the Ukrainian defense forces, is in the hospital recovering from a mortar shrapnel injury.
“I played him a little bit of the song down the phone line, and he gave me his blessing. We both hope to do something together in person in the future,” Gilmour said of a conversation he had with the singer from his hospital bed.
The band used audio of Khlyvnyuk singing in Kyiv’s central square, where he performed a Ukrainian protest song written during World War I that has been recently embraced in protest of Russia’s invasion.
“Hey Hey Rise Up” will be available on all streaming and download platforms, the band said.
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“I hope it will receive wide support and publicity. We want to raise funds for humanitarian charities and raise morale. We want to express our support for Ukraine and, in that way, show that most of the world thinks that it is totally wrong for a superpower to invade the independent democratic country that Ukraine has become,” Gilmour said.
Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, was not involved in the recording.
