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Key Points The Church’s new video uses Dorothea Lange’s photos to evoke a haunting atmosphere. Bassist Steve Kilbey described the track as “bleak and yet beautiful...intense, forlorn and exultant.” The band’s U.S. tour is rescheduled for 2026 after a family emergency delay. Artists sometimes look back in history to find inspiration for their current projects. Some might say that Australian band the Church, which draws inspiration from late 1960s-era psychedelia, has made a career out of it. For the video of their new single, “Sacred Echoes (Part Two),” the Church has gone back even further. The clip, directed by Australian musician and visual director Donald Baldie, uses photos of famed Great Depression-era photographer Dorothea Lange to capture the mood of the haunting track. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 Who Was Dorothea Lange? Lange, who was born in Hoboken, N.J., decided she wanted to become a photographer before she ever used or owned a camera. She went on to study photography at Columbia University and initially shot portraits at a studio in San Francisco, but with the start of the Great Depression she set out to document the lives people suffering on the roads and streets of California. A digital archive of her work has been available for viewing courtesy of the Oakland Museum of California since 2020. The first four words of Church bassist/vocalist/founder Steve Kilbey’s description of the band’s new single can also be applied to Lange’s stunning photographs. “Bleak and yet beautiful ‘Sacred Echoes (Part Two)’ is unlike any previous Church song ever with its almost orchestral climaxes and its sombre mood,” Steve Kilbey said in a statement. “The lyrics and voice are the weariness at the point where hope and hopelessness merge. The music is by turns delicate and sparse turning into a churning monstrous racket. Intense, forlorn and exultant!” The video clip for the song brings to life Lange’s haunting black-and-white Depression-era photos and then flashes forward to the present with color performance footage of the Church as well as scenes of a baptism in a rural lake before going back to the stark black-and-white images. It returns to additional performance footage of the band and a Day of the Dead celebration and ends with the credit, “Based on the work of Dorothea Lange 1985-1965.” ‘Under the Milky Way’ and More The Church is best known for the 1988 top 40 hit “Under the Milky Way,” a song that has lived on through its original recording as well as covers by Rick Springfield in 2005, fellow Aussie Sia in 2010, Metric in 2016, and several others. Though the Church hasn’t had a big hit since “Under the Milky Way,” the band has soldiered on through lineup changes and continues to record and tour. The band’s 2023 album The Hypnogogue was named one of the best albums of 2023 by SPIN. The Church followed that with the companion album Eros Zeta and the Perfumed Guitars in 2024.
