Haim Rock Out on ‘Feel the Thunder’ for ‘The Croods: A New Age’

Haim have revealed a new song “Feel the Thunder,” to be featured on the soundtrack for the animated children’s film The Croods: A New Age.

With hair-metal guitars and a live music sound, it’s a goofy, high-octane departure from what we usually expect from a new Haim song. But according to the sisters, that was part of the fun of recording it with co-writer and producer Ariel Rechtshaid, who is “the biggest Guns ‘n’ Roses fan,” according to Danielle Haim.

“He’s obsessed with them – he went and saw them on their most recent tour a bunch of times,” she tells Rolling Stone. “And so I figured that that’s what we were looking for. We were like, ‘Let’s get Ariel.’ But I’d never tried to make music like that before, so it was fully like a crazy experiment.”

“Feel the Thunder” appears in the movie as a theme song for the Thunder Sisters, and works as an anthem in a scene where they arrive to save the day. Haim not only had to write the song specifically to fit the scene, but also work with a style of production they weren’t used to: live-sounding drums, with the echoing effect you’d hear on Appetite for Destruction.

“We literally set up a small sound system in the recording studio,” Este Haim says. “We mic’d all the drums and had it pumping through a small speaker system, which we’d never done before. But I guess that’s how all those records got made.”

Plus, Danielle adds, it was a rare opportunity to record rock music specifically for a children’s movie. “We grew up listening to rock music, pop, a healthy smattering of a ton of different kinds of music,” she says. “I don’t know how often you really hear rock music in a kid’s film anymore, or rock music in general anymore.”

Haim worked with The Croods: A New Age composer and former Devo frontman Mark Mothersaugh, who says, “I thought it was cool how these young women are in this cool part of their trajectory right now. I look at them and think about what a great time Devo had when we were where they are right now. They’re very talented ladies who are very fun to work with.”

The Croods: A New Age premieres in theaters on November 25th.