Death Cab for Cutie’s ‘Gold Rush’ is about Seattle, but filmed in Los Angeles

Death Cab for Cutie has a new song, “Gold Rush,” out with an accompanying music video. And surprise: the longtime Seattle residents (by way of Bellingham) wrote about the omnipresent topics of Amazon and a rapidly changing city.

Specifically, frontman Ben Gibbard focused on his neighborhood of Capitol Hill in an interview with NPR’s Bob Boilen: “I’ll walk down Broadway and walk past a location that used to be a bar I’d frequent with friends, or somewhere where I had a beautifully intense conversation with somebody that I once loved very much.”

“The song is not a complaint about how things were better or anything like that,” Gibbard clarified. “It’s an observation, but more about coming to terms with the passage of time and losing the people and the moments in my life all over again as I walk down a street that is now so unfamiliar.”

If you’re a Seattleite, that street Gibbard walks down in the music video may have looked especially unfamiliar—because the video was filmed in Los Angeles, specifically around Ingraham near Witmer. (You can even see the produce truck that pops up in the video on Google Maps!)

It might be easy to assume from afar that Gibbard is walking down a Seattle street, given the subject matter, but Seattle’s not known for palm trees or substantial fire escapes.

Not that other areas, including Los Angeles, aren’t experiencing rapid change or gentrification—the sentiment seems just as at home in a host of other cities. But if you’re looking for a music video about all our favorite Seattle spots being gone, try Tacocat’s “Bridge to Hawaii.”

• Ben Gibbard Talks About Death Cab For Cutie’s New Album And First Single, ‘Gold Rush’ [NPR]

Thank you to Elijah Chiland and Bianca Barragan at Curbed LA for helping us sleuth out the location.