French Electronic Music Duo Daft Punk Announce Split in 8-Minute Video

To everyone’s surprise, Daft Punk are retiring from the music scene after almost 30 years. Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, the French electronic duo who met at secondary school in Paris in 1987 and went on to form Daft Punk in 1993, announce their split in an eight-minute video titled "Epilogue," in which one member explodes and the other walks off into the sunrise.

The clip opens with the pair walking in the desert wearing their trademark robot helmets and leather jackets until one of them stops, removes his Daft Punk-embellished jacket and has a switch set off by the other. The duo’s track “Touch” from the 2013 Random Access Memories album begins to play after the one whose switch is flipped walks away quickly and explodes into pieces. The album, which included the global hit single “Get Lucky,” won the Grammy Award for Best Album the following year. Since then, the pair's most prominent work was a collaboration with The Weeknd on two songs from his 2016 album Starboy, including the title track and “I Feel It Coming.”

Though it’s unclear whether Epilogue is meant to suggest that one member will continue the band solo, as it ends with one of them walking into the sunrise alone—possibly hinting to a new project in the works—Daft Punk’s longtime publicist Kathryn Frazier has confirmed the break up, without disclosing any further information regarding the video’s finale.