First Watch: Kalle Mattson, 'Avalanche'

By Bob Boilen

Published July 30, 2015 at 8:03 AM EDT

Attention all music geeks: Can you identify the 35 album covers Canadian singer Kalle Mattson re-creates in this video?

"Avalanche" is the title track for his new EP, to be released on Aug. 21. It's a big, bold sound for Kalle and draws from the influences of many of the musical heroes he pays homage to in this video, as he told us via email:

"I've had the video concept in my head for a long time actually. I remember being 10 or 11 years old flipping through the Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time magazine and choosing what records to borrow out of my dad's collection based on the covers alone. All of the albums we recreated are super important to me and the video sort of serves as a window into what has influenced me growing up, discovering music for the first time and then eventually writing songs. One of my main worries was that this would seem like a bit of an ego trip inserting my face into a famous Dylan cover or something but I really think it came out as a work of love for the artists, their records & the covers that also make those albums so special."

I had to watch the video a few times to get the majority of the albums Mattson references. The last one that appears, his own Avalanche EP, is the follow-up to his 2014 full-length album, Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold.