Watch St. Vincent Perform the National Anthem and Talk Football

We're less than a month away from the Sept. 11 start of the NFL regular season, and we're surprised to learn that St. Vincent is psyched for the new season. Earlier this week, the Dallas Cowboys released a video where she talked about her love of the team and performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" on guitar.

As she describes in the clip above, the native of Dallas was turned on to football during her childhood as Annie Clark. At the time, the Cowboys -- led by quarterback Troy Aikman, running back Emmitt Smith and wide receiver Michael Irvin -- were the top team in the league, winning three Super Bowls in four seasons between 1992 and 1995. So enamored was she with the team that, as she says, "My parents bought me a Dallas Cowboy uniform and I had this vision that I would go to a Dallas Cowboy game, fully clad, and they would be scouring he stands, going, 'Who can we get to win this football game?' And I'd be like [raises hand], 'Me!'"

Her take on the national anthem, using her own signature model guitar by Ernie Ball, involves octave and distortion effects. But although she doesn't go for a violent, Jimi Hendrix-like reinvention of it, she doesn't shy away from turning it into a political statement. She adds that she wanted to create a "version that was kind of bendy and a little bit manic or off-kilter, just to represent the idea of what it is to be an American and how we're gonna be the best version of ourselves in the future and the kind of turbulent times in which we live."

Her rendition is being used in a longform commercial that the NFL made in support of Team USA in the Olympics. After seeing the groundskeeping crews of several stadiums paint the end zone with football helmets and the words "Team USA," the sentence, "This summer, we are all one team" appears on the screen.

Listen to St. Vincent's Version of the National Anthem

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