For Where the Wild Things Are’s music, Jonze recruited former lover and frequent collaborator Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. In turn, O drafted a who’s who of indie rock talent, among them her chief co-writers Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Yeah Yeah Yeahs associate Imaad Wasif and her bandmates Brian Chase and Nick Zinner, all of whom perform under the aptly storybook name Karen O & the Kids. With their help, O uncovers new musical directions. Wildness abounds in her work with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Native Korean Rock, but neither band’s music is particularly childlike. Here, she taps into a rainbow of youthful expression, from “All Is Love”’s pure joy to the tribal festivity of “Rumpus” to “Animal”’s feral folk, which puts O’s ferocious scream in a completely different context than her other work. Yet on “Igloo” and “Sailing Home,” her voice is gentler than it’s been almost anywhere else – the only other time she has sounded so soft is on “Hello Tomorrow,” the song she wrote for Jonze’s 2005 Nike television commercial.

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