Hippie Sabotage Achieve Career Milestone with 1 Billion YouTube Views on Tove Lo Remix

Hippie Sabotage welcomes the new year by crossing a billion streams on YouTube for their remix of Tove Lo’s ‘Habits (Stay High).’

Sacramento electronic duo Hippie Sabotage has reached a new career high. The pair, consisting of brothers Kevin and Jeff Saurer, has been active in the music space since 2005, but it was only about a decade ago that they truly started making large commercial strides. They’ve come a long way since then, and the new year brought an unprecedented win for the group — over one billion YouTube views for a single video with their brand name stamped on it!

Swedish singer-songwriter Tove Lo was shot into space from the success of her song ‘Habits (Stay High),’ but that was no match for what came right after. When she summoned Hippie Sabotage to remix the track, the song’s popularity doubled … literally. Whereas the original track has around 420 million views on YouTube, its sabotaged reimagination generated far more than twice the views.

Eight years since the above track dropped as part of Tove Lo’s debut record and was subsequently tweaked for a larger audience, it has become a staple of the EDM community. Though the first cut was a sleeper hit, the Hippie Sabotage version gained traction immediately and is still very much in rotation. Whether or not you’re familiar with the aforementioned artists, the song in question is practically unavoidable — you’ve almost certainly heard it at some point or the other.

Hippie Sabotage have made a name for themselves due to their genre-spanning approach to electronic music, flirting with everything from psychedelia to rock to alternative, and everything in between. This is precisely why a collaboration with Tove Lo made so much sense — though a pop musician on paper, she too is known for bringing external elements such as grunge to the commercial realm.

After a packed 2022 live schedule, the brothers Saurer have the next twelve months at their disposal. Though they did put out a remix of camino’s ‘Burning Fire’ last year, their last full-length record was 2021’s “Floating Palace.” Because Hippie Sabotage rarely goes silent for extended periods of time, it’s safe to say that we can expect something new, be it a series of shows or new music, from the shape-shifting pair this year.

Tove Lo, on the other hand, has the year planned out. She started out around the same time as her peers from Northern California and has been on the rise ever since. Last year, she dropped her widely successful record, “Dirt Femme,” and is now set to take it on the road. With support from Slayyyter, “Sweden’s darkest pop export” will kickstart the Dirt Femme Tour next month and play shows across the United States. Later in the year, she is scheduled to perform at Hangout Festival in Alabama as well as Lollapalooza in Argentina, in addition to several other international dates.

Karan Singh

I am an Indian American music journalist based in Los Angeles. My interests include (but aren’t limited to) downtempo, industrial, drum & bass and trip hop. After working in the publishing industry as a copy editor for nearly three years, I decided to switch professions and become a writer. I have a bachelor’s degree in English from UC Santa Cruz and a master’s degree in Specialized Journalism from the University of Southern California. My aim as a writer is to explore the forces that energize creativity. I’ve always felt a natural pull toward the arts and entertainment space, and my stories seek to magnify the facets of its adjoining cultures.

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