This is not a drill: the music video for our new song “My Idea” is here!
Watch it immediately and return to this box to read the full story.
Q: IS HE NOT MAN? A: HE IS MEERKAT!
“My Idea” stars Alex Karpovsky (from Girls) as a motion capture actor struggling to reconcile himself with the cartoon meerkat he plays in the movies. We see him crawling, burrowing, and screaming on set; between takes, he vapes and imagines himself the star of his own story, delivering a profound TED Talk about the nature of wasted potential.
The video is an homage to the hidden labor animating the computer cinema. Motion capture performance is both exhibitionist and invisible, a metaphor for the gap between how we imagine ourselves and how we’re seen by others—and between our creative aspirations and our capacity to fulfill them.
As our director Kailee McGee put it when she first presented this video concept to us, “it’s a painful process being an idea who is waiting to be brought to life, waiting to become real.” Most of our ideas never make it. But because our motto is ambition beyond means, somehow we’re able to will ideas into existence. Of course, it wouldn’t be possible without our friends!
TONIGHT WE FEAST ON ELF
A few years ago we came across a behind-the-scenes video of Benedict Cumberbatch filming his performance as the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. There’s something deeply cringe about it—Cumberbatch’s Shakespearean sincerity is at odds with the ridiculousness of his unitard and the studio itself, which looks like a high school wrestling gym. In our world of CGI cinema and prestige video games, though, this kind of thing is ubiquitous—a shadow Hollywood filled with serious actors rolling around on key-green foam wedges and yelling at tennis balls.
Anyway, we were obsessed with it. So just imagine how knocked out we were when Kailee McGee pitched us on a music video concept using motion capture as the central metaphor. We were sold from the first frame: a mocap actor wakes up in bed at home, still wearing their suit, trapped forever behind the scenes. We were extremely lucky to cast Alex Karpovsky as the actor; he’s the real deal, and brought enormous gravitas to what could have been a silly role. He committed completely and spent days learning choreography.
From there, the world came together naturally; Alex would play a guy playing a meerkat, in an animated film sequel called Burrowing Home II, and we would play the director, sound engineer, and cinematographer on set. We shot the video over four days this summer with an amazing crew. It was an all-hands collaboration—Claire wrote Alex’s TED Talk about the science of wasted potential, Jona designed all the titles. Our friends at Heck Studio made us a CGI model of the meerkat. Like all short films, it’s a miracle.
THE FIRST OF AN ONSLAUGHT OF NEW SINGLES
This is the first of a bunch of new songs we’ll be releasing as singles and then compiling into something like a “mini-album.” It’s some of our favorite music that we’ve ever made, and—maybe this is a bigger conversation—feels like a direct outgrowth of the years we spent noodling around with AI. After all that thinking, we just wanted to have some fun. To make music that feels good, and is weird in a totally human, non-algorithmic way. Wiggly stuff!
JOIN US IN CELEBRATING BIRTHDAY BANDCAMP FRIDAY
The video drops today, but the “My Idea” single comes out Friday, which is Jona’s birthday (and Bandcamp Friday)! We’re asking you, dear reader, to celebrate by purchasing My Idea on Bandcamp for $1 (or more). That’s 1/4 the price of a cup of coffee! Alternatively you could stream the song on your platform of choice 230 times to generate one dollar. But if you’re going to do that, just put it on repeat and mute your speakers after you’ve had enough. Either way, again: My Idea is out on streaming and Bandcamp on Friday.
Pre-order it on Bandcamp here!
“I’ve got an idea, no idea how to do it,”
Claire, Rob, and Jona