Pussy Riot’s first NFT sales will benefit victims of domestic violence

Pussy Riot, the popular Russian protest rock group, is releasing a music video for the song “Panic Attack” today along with four NFTs (non-fungible tokens) this Saturday for collectors. Sales of the digital collector’s edition will go toward support for victims of domestic violence in Russia, as well as towards the artists’ own future creations.

“Panic Attack” is a musing on what it’s like to be alive thus far in the 2020s, delving into mostly uncharted territory for Pussy Riot. Nadya Tolokonnikova, one of the group’s founding members, says she wrote the song after “staring at the wall for 24 hours in the middle of the pandemic, feeling 100 percent helpless.” She says she wanted to write something uplifting — but found what she really wanted to do was scream about the despair inside her. Relatable, to say the least.

Fittingly for such a technology-focused product, the music video is rendered like a platformer video game, complete with pixelated rainbows, diamonds, and foes. It’s directed Asad J. Malik, an AR creator and head of hologram-making business Jadu.

The video’s release is made all the more intriguing by Pussy Riot’s decision to release the single as a series of NFTs — which, as anyone on social media right now will tell you, are suddenly everywhere. The NFTs for “Panic Attack” will be released through the Foundation app on Saturday, March 13.

Non-what-now? — Pussy Riot is one of the first groups we’ve seen to use NFTs as a method by which to raise funds for a charitable organization. It’s a novel use case for NFT technology, which has recently garnered lots of attention across all corners of the internet.

But the concept itself is still kind of confusing, so here’s a quick primer: non-fungible tokens, better known as NFTs, are a method by which digital scarcity is created. Without diving too deep into the technicals here, that essentially means using advanced cryptography to create collectible digital objects that can be proven to be unique thanks to a blockchain of the sort that makes cryptocurrencies possible.

NFTs are blowing up the digital art space right now. Big names like the Kings of Leon are using NFTs for digital album sales; Azealia Banks successfully sold her audio sex tape as an NFT; Steve Aoki is creating digital art and selling it with the technology for nearly a million dollars a pop. So the applications basically run the gamut.

Digital protest art — Pussy Riot has always used unconventional means to create art that sparks conversations. “Panic Attack,” along with the rest of the group’s new EP of the same name, certainly does this — and the inclusion of an NFT edition is sure to further amplify responses to the song.

As the popularity of NFTs has grown exponentially, so too has derision around their very existence. The concept of digital scarcity — as well as the underlying costs of creating that scarcity — have proven polarizing. Just choosing to use the technology is sure to bring attention to the group’s latest release.

NFTs are here to stay, so they might as well be put to charitable use. Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda is using the technology for similar reasons. So it’s not all rich artists getting richer... though there’s plenty of that going on, too.