Video: My Hawaii, ‘Setsuna’

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My Hawaii
My Hawaii

“Setsuna” translates to “a moment” or “an instant,” and the new song from My Hawaii makes you want to embrace it before it slips away. The eclectic indie-pop ensemble is the brainchild of Tokyo-born singer-songwriter Yohei Shikano, a onetime stagehand/guitar technician for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros and Yoko Ono. After an EP release two-plus years ago, My Hawaii is returning with a full-length, “Mood Matters,” due April 6. Shikano’s music, which has found fans in Yuka Honda (“gorgeous, clever in the kindest way, warm, and whimsical,” she says), Nels Cline, Akron/Family and Of Montreal, draws from ’60s pop and island music — they call it “underground hula music.” Shikano recently scored a feature film “Hee,” which will be premiered at the 2016 Berlin Film Festival, and today the Mount Washington-based group unveiled the video, made from archival footage, for the lilting single “Setsuna.” The song is sung in Japanese, but to appreciate his impressionistic lyrics, there is a translation below the video.

||| Watch: The video for “Setsuna”

||| Previously: “Fingers Numb”

Lyrics, translated:

it started to drizzle
painting the city sky gray
it’s raining it’s raining

pale shadow of the buildings
melting into the main street
shadow shadow

here i have in my hands
finally
the warmth that i had been longing for
but its for a very short time…setsuna setsuna

who told me that
spring rain brings happiness?
who was that? who was that?

the city is watching this
candy melt in the rain
and it shows no sign of slowing down

here i have in my hands
finally
the warmth that i had been longing for
but its for setsuna setsuna