A Song for Tomorrow: Kelsie Kimberlin’s Poetic Plea for Peace
On September 19, 2025, US-Ukrainian pop singer Kelsie Kimberlin dropped her new single, Dream of Peace, a breathtaking music video that's more like a film epic than an album track release. Shot in Kyiv, the capital of a war-torn nation still fighting war, the video is a surreal journey: Kelsie travels through a desolate, post-apocalyptic wasteland where she falls upon a dead astronaut. Under the subtle pressure of a finger, the vista changes—life explodes, color returns, and the astronaut is Kelsie, standing straight in an ocean of golden sunflowers beneath a brilliant blue sky. The message is clear: Ukraine doesn't just want to live, but to flourish, to be beautiful, and to be free.
More incredible, however, is the courage involved in producing it. Filmed in late August last year in the midst of one of the most belligerent waves of missile and drone strikes ever to engulf Kyiv, the production team worked under martial law, their imagination against the backdrop of air raid sirens. Directed by visionary Denys Akulov of ToBe Production, the mastermind behind Ed Sheeran's 2Step viral video, Dream of Peace sets the narrative standard with awe-inspiring effects and motion control sorcery. Superimposed over these pictures is a swelling tempest song—an orchestra and choir reaching a soul-seizing peak—by Ukrainian composer Yuriy Shapeta and Colombian producer Pedro Vengoechea, whose sound sheen was supplied by Grammy titans Liam Nolan and Stuart Hawkes.
For Kelsie, this release is a campaign. "I wanted to do something special to bring attention to Ukrainians' dreams for peace," she says. In a fitting gesture, the video will make its international debut on September 21 at the International Peace Concert in Los Angeles on the United Nations' International Day of Peace. It is a powerful union: song, message, and moment, in union to lift the voice of a people that are weeping for harmony in a broken world.
And Kelsie's path is only gaining momentum. With over 100 original pieces composed, millions of streams to rack up, and international acclaim, she has become a creative voice in music and philanthropic pursuits as well. Even in the current year, she was recognized with the United Nations Humanitarian Award and King Charles's St. George's Royal Medal of Honor for unwavering support to Ukraine. She will eventually take her work onto an even greater level—a feature film of Ukraine's strength in its entirety, built from her songs, to tour the world as both cultural critique and entreaty. If Dream of Peace is anything to go by, Kelsie Kimberlin is not just a child of the age, but a voice of the age.
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