Hilltop Hoods Raise Over $30k For Youths With Cancer After 'Through The Dark' Video Project

The rap group's collaboration with Google Play Music has also won awards in its short lifespan

Respected Australian rap group Hilltop Hoods have helped raise more than $30,000 in honour of young people with cancer through their collaborative video project with Google Play Music for their track Through The Dark.

All said and done, the band and Google helped raise $34,000 in service of non-profit organisation CanTeen for their Side Of Stage project, designed to grant special access to live music — through meet-and-greets, backstage tours, you name it — for young people aged 12-25 who are living with cancer.

"We're so happy to announce that the 'Through The Dark' interactive project raised $34,000 for CanTeen to jump-start 'Side of Stage'," Hilltop Hoods reported of the project today. "Side Of Stage is a program that we're proud ambassadors of, and something that you'll be hearing a lot more about in the coming year."

Originally inspired by the leukemia diagnosis of Liam, the young son of the group's MC Pressure (Daniel Smith), the band and Google teamed up with CanTeen to create an interactive video for Through The Dark, which, as we reported at the time, gives fans a chance "to engage with two 3D-animated worlds and a father and son's journey through dark and light". (The youngster is now living cancer-free.)

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"It was amazing to be involved in a project where brilliant minds were able to use cutting-edge technology to create an immersive virtual world, and then connect that experience to a very important charity," the band said in a statement.

The clip, which took nine months of planning to pull together, featured a link to the Hilltop Hoods' Drinking From The Sun, Walking Under Stars Restrung album, promising to donate #1 to CanTeen for the first 30,000 fans who listened to the album after viewing the video in the fortnight following its release.

Adding to its accolades, the Through The Dark interactive clip picked up two Favourite Website Awards — FWA Of The Year and 2016 FWA People's Choice Award — putting it in the same league as Pharrell Williams' 24 Hours Of Happy, Intel's Museum Of Me and Google's The Wilderness Downtown.

You can still view, interact with, and find out more about the clip on desktop or mobile here.

See CanTeen's website for more details about the Side Of Stage initiative.