Pink Floyd announced Thursday that it will release its first new music in over three decades to raise money for the people of Ukraine.
David Gilmour and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd contribute vocals to “Hey Hey Rise Up,” which also features Ukrainian vocalist Andriy Khlyvnyuk of BoomBox. Roger Waters, the band’s founding member who left in the 1980s, is not engaged.
Khlyvnyuk performs a patriotic Ukrainian song from a video he shot in front of Kyiv’s St. Sophia Cathedral and shared it on social media.
The video was “an emotional moment that made me want to put it to music,” according to Gilmour, who performed with BoomBox in London in 2015.
Khlyvnyuk cut short a tour of the United States after Russia’s invasion to return to Ukraine and join a territorial defense squad.
While writing the song, Gilmour says he spoke with Khlyvnyuk, who was recovering in a hospital from a mortar shrapnel injury. “I played him a tiny portion of the song over the phone and he gave me his blessing,” he explained. In the future, we both hope to do something together in person.”
The song will be published on Friday, with all earnings going to the Ukraine Humanitarian Relief Fund, according to the band.
Pink Floyd was formed in London in the mid-1960s and helped to establish the UK psychedelic scene before releasing seminal albums such as “The Dark Side of the Moon,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “The Wall” in the 1970s.
Waters left the band in 1985, and the other members of Pink Floyd didn’t record together again until 1994’s “The Division Bell.” Following the death of keyboardist Richard Wright in 2008, Gilmour stated that he doubted Pink Floyd would ever perform together again.
