AceShowbiz - Love, BB released their new single Idle Moments on November 13, transforming Grant Green's jazz classic into a lyrical song with original lyrics by Michael Leviton and flute by Matt Bauder.

The idea for the song began long before the recording. Leviton brought the CD of Green's instrumental to his crush's house with a plan: put it on, ask her to slow dance, and see what happens. Dancing did happen. Romance did not. Leviton got over his crush, but he never quite got over the song.

"It's true. I never got over the song, and I always thought someone should sing it," Leviton said.

When his bandmate Brooke Backman expressed interest in singing it, Leviton wrote lyrics inspired by the title, imagining what role "Idle Moments" could play in someone's life. "It used to be common for lyricists to write words to pre-existing instrumentals," he explained. "So when my bandmate Brooke expressed interest in singing it, I wrote lyrics inspired by the title, imagining what role 'Idle Moments' could play in someone's life. Depression is idle. Passing out from drunkenness is idle. Is death just an endless series of idle moments?"

The track was captured using the band's signature live-to-tape approach, pairing Backman's vocals with Bauder's flute. The arrangement lends the song a distinctly beatnik sensibility: work is square, idleness is hip, and there may be something suspicious going on in the next room.

The song's noirish, spy-film atmosphere practically demanded a music video of its own. Leviton, a devoted consumer of heist movies, has a particular affection for the stretch after the robbery, when criminals sit around a hideout waiting, giving their personalities plenty of time to ruin everything.

"I like stories of perfect plans foiled by human stupidity and insecurity," he said. "Those movies resonate with my general worldview; my life is full of metaphorical failed heists."

The resulting video brings that sensibility to life, with bad decisions, double-crosses and a decidedly shrinking cast of characters. It also reunites the cast of a previous Love, BB project, including dancer and actress Kitty Verte, who returns in a new role and costume. Drawing inspiration from the Elvis film King Creole, where a noir plot makes room for its star to sing and dance, Leviton devised a caper that would give Verte a reason to dance amid the criminal proceedings.

Describing themselves as "ghosts of a jazz era that may or may not have existed," Love, BB makes music that feels like forgotten standards awaiting rediscovery. Following their first two singles, Solitaire and Those City Lights, Idle Moments takes that sensibility in a new direction, finding an entirely different story inside a familiar piece of music.