Our Rating: Nostalgia

I have always considered Daft Punk to be one of the rare acts who understood mythology as well as melody. Their split five years ago felt less like a breakup and more like the end of a chapter in modern electronic folklore. They exited quietly, deliberately, without reunion bait or nostalgia merch cycles. That restraint alone set them apart.

Now, marking five years since that split, they resurface not with a new track, but with a new visual for “Human After All,” their 2005 single that once felt abrasive and minimal to the point of provocation.

The new video, cut from footage of their 2006 sci-fi film Electroma and edited by Cédric Hervet, feels less like a celebration and more like a reminder. Two figures in helmets driving endlessly through desert landscapes. Alienated. Isolated. Watching humanity from the outside. Then entering a suburban town only to discover everyone else is wearing helmets too.

The irony lands harder in 2026 than it did in 2005.

“Human After All” was always one of their most confrontational releases. Repetitive, stark, mechanical. It lacked the disco warmth of Discovery and the grand futurism of Random Access Memories. At the time, some dismissed it as cold. In retrospect, it feels prophetic.

The updated visual reframes the track not as robotic detachment, but as commentary on performance. On identity. On the masks we wear willingly. In Electroma, the helmets symbolised alienation. In this new edit, they feel almost mundane. Normalised. Ubiquitous.

There is something quietly powerful about Daft Punk choosing this moment to revisit that particular era. Not the glossy nostalgia of “One More Time.” Not the global crescendo of “Get Lucky.” But the stripped-down, almost uncomfortable insistence of “Human After All.”

It suggests that the band understood their own thesis long before the culture caught up.

Five years after their split, Daft Punk remain curiously present. Their absence still feels intentional. Their archive continues to unfold like a carefully curated mythology rather than a catalogue dump.

This new video does not try to reinvent the narrative. It simply sharpens it.

And perhaps that is the point.

We were always human after all. We just preferred the helmets.