Best known for breakout hit “Home,” Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros have had their first full-length, Up From Below, out for about a year now. Originally, Sharpe was a character in the (apparently very large) imagination of lead singer Alex Ebert (also of Ima Robot). Sharpe, says Ebert, is a Christ figure “who was sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind” but—shocker—keeps getting blown off track by love affairs. Ebert and Jade Castrinos took Edward Sharpe on as the namesake for their band and now tour around the country with a rotating cast of musicians in a big, white school bus. And lest we forget, they’re also releasing a 12-part feature-length movie musical. Part 1 (below) is titled “Desert Song” and begins with a home video of Ebert’s father chanting in—you guessed it—the desert. The video is a sort of acid trip with daddy issues or, as he explains it, Ebert’s way of coping with the middle name his father secretly wrote on his birth certificate: a Native American word for demon. Good luck. And watch out for the moon.
