The Kills have been one of my favorite bands for the past couple of years. They used to be fairly obscure, but now that one half of the band is dating Kate Moss, pretty much every move The Kills make makes it into the British press. And so last week there was an item in the NME about their new album’s U.S. release date, and it included an interesting bit of information: “the entire record was inspired by a documentary called Pizza Pizza Daddio, which focuses on children in inner city schools in 1960s America.”

I did some research, and I found the film in question. It’s actually called Pizza Pizza Daddy-O, and it’s a short, anthropological study of games played on playgrounds by young Black girls. The whole film is available for streaming or download at Folkstreams.net; I’ve embedded a one-minute trailer above.

As the ominous narrator puts it, “Over the past several hundred years, Afro-American children have developed a repetoire of singing games that have become a permanent part of the Black heritage.” With the exception of a couple of interruptions from the narrator, the 18 minute-film is almost wall-to-wall documentation of the games––it’s essentially a concert film. It may seem like an unlikely source of inspiration for a contemporary, tabloid friendly indie rock band, but I see the connection. The Kills’ songs are repetitive, chant-like, and often incorporate elements of call and response–kind of like the songs in Pizza Pizza Daddy-O, except sung by chain-smoking vegans and set to menacing guitars.