Taras Stanin covers Nirvana as a heart-shaped beatbox

You think you’ve heard every version of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” out there? I thought I had, too. Whether it’s the original studio track, to every singer-songwriter cover that’s ever graced YouTube, that melody is burned into our brains.

But I stumbled across something different this morning...a video is making the rounds on TikTok of Taras Stanin doing a full-on beatbox rendition of that iconic riff and rhythm. It sounds like a gimmick until you actually listen to it. This dude manages to replicate that very specific gritty sound of the guitar and the snare of the drums just using his voice and a microphone.

It’s wild how songs we’ve listened to for decades still find new ways to wiggle into the modern online music conversation. Stanin isn’t trying to be better than Cobain, and he’s not trying to change the genre. He’s just taking a piece of music building it back up from scratch using nothing but his own lungs and a little rhythm. Sometimes the best tributes are just showing you know every single beat(box) of the song by heart!

Check out more from Taras at his YouTube page here!