David Byrne Reveals He and Olivia Rodrigo Worked on Choreography Ahead of His Surprise Festival Appearance (Exclusive)

David Byrne enjoyed burning down the house with Olivia Rodrigo.

Speaking to PEOPLE ahead of his album’s release, Who Is the Sky?, the former Talking Heads frontman recalled teaming up with the “Vampire” singer at Governor’s Ball to perform “Burning Down the House.”

“Well, yes, that was a little bit of a surprise,” Byrne, 73, says, when asked about how that meetup came to be, speaking over Zoom from his apartment’s music room.

“I went to her show when she was in New York. I’m a fan, like her music and her performance was really good. And we said hello afterwards.”

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“And then out of nowhere, I got a message or an email or whatever, it was saying, ‘Would you like to join Olivia [at] Governor’s Ball?’ And I happened to be here, so it wasn’t that hard. I’m preparing to go on tour again, but I’m not quite there yet.”

Byrne says he told Rodrigo, 22, he’d “love to.” “This could be fun.” He also asked if she had “time to figure out some choreography between the two of us?” — and the “Drivers License” singer happily obliged.

“And it was very flattering. A lot of what she wanted to do was inspired by [the] unusual movement that I did in Stop Making Sense.” The singers both wore red and grooved onstage, paying homage to the 1984 concert film.

Adds Byrne: “Anyway, that was a lot of fun.”

The performance happened towards the end of Rodrigo’s headlining set in June. “I’m so honored to share the stage tonight with a special guest,” Rodrigo told the Gov Ball crowd, introducing Byrne to perform the 1983 song, who came out with a guitar in hand. “Would you give it up for the legendary, David Byrne!”

Byrne’s latest album, Who Is the Sky?, comes seven years after he released America Utopia. He tells PEOPLE that he’s received positive feedback ahead of its release.

“The reaction I’ve gotten from people is they said, ‘Oh, we need this right now. This is what we need right now.” Which I take it to mean that it’s an album that’s playful,” says Byrne.

“It’s a lot of joy and all that in the record. And I think people see that as a resistance or a pushback to what they see and what I see is happening in the world. So a lot of things where we’re all divisive and separated from one another, and the record is in some ways a counterforce to that.”

Who Is the Sky? contains more story songs than past albums, and Byrne gets inspiration from many places. “Sometimes the job. If I say something, I’ll jot down just the line sometimes, that might be a title end up being the title of a song,” he says.

When writing, some ideas don’t amount to much, but some become songs. “Sometimes little by little, sometimes I’d work on a stanza and it seemed to have the beginning and then come back to it, say, ‘Okay, what’s the next part?’ “

“And the nice thing was on some of those songs, there seemed to be a summation, a fable or parable that emerged at the end that it was actually, it wasn’t just a imaginary amusing situation. It actually is saying something,” Byrne says.

Following the release of Who Is the Sky? Byrne kicks off a tour in support of the new album through North America before heading to Europe and Australia in 2026.

Who Is the Sky? is available to stream.