Today, following their incredible performance on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Long Live Riff Raff has released the official music video for their song “Buffalo.” One of the emotional highlights of 2024’s The Past Is Still Alive, the album that Pitchfork just declared one of the best of the decade, “Buffalo” is a song about survival, perseverance, , a love song about miracles and memories of real people and places. What bandleader Alinda Segarra (they/them) experienced during a trip to New Mexico. Directed by Jeff Perlman, co-creator of The Past Is Still Alive, the video features Segarra occupying the Field Museum in his brand new home of Chicago, roaming with a herd of wild water buffalo, an endangered species, It’s shining a light.
Watch the music video for “Buffalo” and watch Riff Raff perform the song on a new episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show. There, Clarkson notes that Segarra is “often referred to as one of the best songwriters in this country.”
In recent weeks, Alinda Segarra performed “Buffalo” on stage at the Ryman Auditorium at the Americana Honors & Awards, where “The Past Is Still Alive” was nominated for Album of the Year. They also performed music from The Past is Still Alive on Austin City Limits and CBS Saturday Morning, as well as a packed house hosted by poet and journalist Hanif Abdulaqib. He also performed at the Grammy Museum program in New York City. As the New York Times reports, Segarra continues to “etch their stories into the American songbook and claim they belong.”
“I wrote ‘Buffalo’ about trying to keep a relationship alive in a fast-paced modern world where love feels like it’s on the endangered species list. Last month, I took a rare break from touring. One night we took over the Field Museum in Chicago, hung out with creatures from long ago, and ended up riding in a wagon with the herd in Indiana. It was an adventure to create this video with Jeff Perlman, visual director of “Alive.”
-Alinda Segarra
Hailed as “the next great American road album” (The Atlantic), with fans ranging from Elton John to Eileen Miles, The Past is Still Alive is a memoir of the country’s fringes. It is a map, a profound story and poignant reflection packed into poetic form. Lyrics and unforgettable melodies make up three-minute masterstrokes like “Buffalo,” “Alibi,” “Colossus of Roads,” and “Hawkmoon.” Alinda Segarra remembers her recently deceased father, fondly remembers the first trans woman she met, dives into dumpsters for dinner, falls in love on Superfund sites, and all over the country. Whether they’re singing about hopping around on a train or passing cops on an empty highway, Past Is Still Alive is a song about how they’re known by “one of America’s best songwriters” (Vulture) and “the same… It highlights why he has been praised as “one of the most fearless folk-rock storytellers of his generation” (Pitchfork).
Listen to The Past Is Still Alive via Nonesuch and dig deeper into the album with Segarra’s new publication Resist Psychic Death, released last month via Substack
After dozens of sold-out tours, a string of shows with Norah Jones, and an appearance at Aspen Idea Fest, Long Live Riff Raff will be back on the road this fall, performing in the U.S. and abroad. Find what’s listed here.
