Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin made cultural ambassadors to Russia

It’s true, the band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin have finally been discovered by former Russian President Boris Yeltsin‘s estate and have actually been unveiled as new cultural ambassadors to the country.

The story begins with the indie-pop threesome from Springfield, Missouri being the first American band to play and headline Russia’s largest winter music festival, Old Nu this past January, after being specially invited by the Boris Yeltsin Foundation.

“I thought it was horrible joke and one of my friends was messing with me,” band member Phil Dickey told the US Metro. “We figured out that it was real and the Boris Yeltsin Foundation was sponsoring a big music festival in Yekateringburg where Yeltsin began his political career. The US Consulate heard about us going there and worked out a program with an English speaking school in the same town where we would interact with the students for a cultural exchange. They named us cultural ambassadors for a day—which we are all putting on our resumes.”

They returned home jetlagged but culturally and politically enthused and immediately started writing and recording a new album taking bits of Russian imagery from people, literature and art that they experienced abroad.

“Each song had a different place we were coming from,” says Dickey. “We were just trying to make the parts dance together and sound simple and really warm, like it could be played on your sister’s cassette player.”

New record Fly by Wire will be dropping in September.